!Aestheticism Aestheticism is an approach towards an art that relies on the nature of its beauty and appreciation. Such an approach took a form of movement in 1880s in England which was popularly known as Aesthetic Movement. This term is derived from the world aesthetic which is an adjective and its noun is Aesthetics. Aesthetic means relating to the appreciation of beauty or art, and thus aesthetics meant a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of the concept of beauty. The philosophy of aestheticism is that the art is the supreme value in itself, it has no aim beyond its own perfection, and the end of a work of art is simply to exist and to be beautiful. Flaubert and many others called the practitioners of aestheticism the “priests” who renounced the world for “the religion of beauty”. __History__ Aestheticism started in Europe during the latter nineteenth century with its chief philosophical headquarters in France. Its roots lie in the German theory proposed by ((Kant)) in 1970. He had said that aesthetic contemplation is “disinterested”, indifferent both to the reality and to the utility of the beautiful object. However, it was also influenced by the views of ((Edgar Allan Poe)) expressed in his “The Poetic Principle” , 1850. He had said that the supreme work is a “poem per se”, a “poem written solely for the poem’s sake.” French writers further developed the doctrine in defiance against the indifference or hostility of their society to any art that did not inculcate current utilitarian and social values. They thought that the art is the supreme value among all the works of man. It should be noted here that the French Aestheticism was a self-conscious movement which is said to have begun from Theophile Gautier’s witty defense of his claim that art lacks all utility (Preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, 1835). This French Aestheticism was further developed by mainly by ((Baudelaire)), ((Flaubert)), ((Mallarme)). Many other writers later joined them. The movement slowly picked up and the phrase ‘l’art pour l’art” (arts for art’s same) became their slogan. Writers and artists inculcated in themselves the view that their life is for art’s sake. This commitment to the art became so expressed in them that people sometimes envisioned them as a priest who renounced the practical and self-seeking concerns of ordinary existence in the service of “the religion of beauty”. Some of the proponents of Aestheticism also espoused views and values that developed into another movement called the ((Decadence)). The doctrine of aestheticism, particularly French Aestheticism was introduced into England by Walter Peter. He emphasized on painstaking artifice and stylistic subtlety. He recommended crowding one’s life with the maximum of exquisite sensations. His concept was focused on the supreme value of beauty and of “the love of art for its own sake” (conclusion to the Renaissance, 1873). Major writers of this movement were Oscar Wild, Arthur Symons, Ernest Dowson, and Lionel Johnson. Major artist of this movement was Aubrey Beardsley. The autonomy (self-sufficiency) of art, art (poem or other writings included) as a constructed object with distrust of “spontaneous “nature” etc influenced many writers like W B Yeats, T E Hulme, T S Eliot and the theories of New Critics.