aestheticism
An anti-Victorian reaction that gathered pace towards the end of the nineteenth century and appreciated ‘art for art’s sake’. Followers of aestheticism (or the aesthetic movement), believed that art should be a thing of beauty rather than serving a moral or useful function. The aesthetic movement in architecture and interior design is characterized by the incorporation of antural ornamentation, such as peacock feathers… worked and decorative wood and a Japanese influence. Oscar wild called aestheticism a search after the signs of the beautiful. “It is the science through which men look after the correlation which exists in the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life” (Zukowski, 30). (Ambrose, 2008)