aestheticism
Americannoun
-
the acceptance of artistic beauty and taste as a fundamental standard, ethical and other standards being secondary.
-
an exaggerated devotion to art, music, or poetry, with indifference to practical matters.
-
a late Victorian movement in British and American art characterized by a dedicatedly eclectic search for beauty and by an interest in old English, Japanese, and classical art.
noun
-
the doctrine that aesthetic principles are of supreme importance and that works of art should be judged accordingly
-
sensitivity to beauty, esp in art, music, literature, etc
Etymology
Origin of aestheticism
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Some writers and artists who initially championed boundary-pushing aestheticism later found a spiritual home in the Catholic Church.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 3, 2026
The game the rivals play is beautiful, Cathedral coach Arturo Torres said, because of its aestheticism.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 4, 2022
The centrepiece of this area of academia and aestheticism was a giant hall, the manifestation of Prince Albert's idea of a hub where people could gather and share ideas.
From BBC • Mar. 28, 2021
Pater may have been a creature of 19th-century spiritualism and aestheticism, his sensibility as alien to the Renaissance as to our own era of metrics and algorithms.
From Washington Post • Oct. 28, 2019
A new form of aestheticism has lately appeared which pretends to combine morality and culture.
From Christianity and Ethics A Handbook of Christian Ethics by Alexander, Archibald B. C.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
