Introduction I have chosen 19th century art and the Aesthetic Movement to consider What is an aesthetic? I chose this period because the aesthetic movement of the 19th century celebrated beauty for its own sake, not just in painting but also in furniture, textiles, ceramics, fashion and architecture. Beauty in the Victorian period was very much linked to lifestyle. It was also the period where photography first started to be widely used. Charles Baudelaire sums up the idea of beauty and aesthetics for me, he said: All beauties contain, like all possible phenomena, something eternal and somet...

• Word Count: 2825
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Then the sea becomes violent, in a pendular and unstable ebb-flow: there's "pebbles which the waves draw back and fling and bring the eternal note of sadness in " (10, 14). ... While classical sensibility thrives on moral problems, modern sensibility thrives on metaphysical problems; it is committed to the view that humans are unescapably problematic, not merely because we live in a time of uncertainty when traditional beliefs and absolute standards disintegrated, but because it comes to be considered good, proper that men should live in discomfort. ...

• Word Count: 2695
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: Undergraduate