aestheticism
Americannoun
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the acceptance of artistic beauty and taste as a fundamental standard, ethical and other standards being secondary.
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an exaggerated devotion to art, music, or poetry, with indifference to practical matters.
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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
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the doctrine that aesthetic principles are of supreme importance and that works of art should be judged accordingly
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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.
The standoff between Blanche’s impractical aestheticism and Stanley’s ruthless pragmatism is the heart of this quintessentially American drama.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 4, 2024
It all looks effortless because the power is married to aestheticism, and there isn't an extra note in the composition.
From BBC • May 23, 2023
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
“And yet,” Harris writes, “the fact remains that we feel sentimental about things like camp, drag, and aestheticism now that they are disappearing into the oblivion of a world dominated by Coke commercials and sitcoms.”
From Slate • Jun. 24, 2019
That is the danger of aestheticism for the artist.
From Art by Bell, Clive
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.
