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The Aesthetic Adventure
1945. No Edition Remarks. 269 pages. No dust jacket. Grey cloth. Binding remains firm. Pages are lightly tanned throughout. Previous owner's inscriptions to endpapers and rear pastedown. Water staining to some pages, text remains unaffected. Boards have moderate shelf-wear with bumping to corners and rubbing to surfaces. Light tanning to spine and edges with crushing to spine ends. Staining overall.
- GenresArtBritish Literature
224 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1945
About the author
William Gaunt
100 books2 followersWilliam Gaunt (1900–1980) was a British artist and art historian.
After serving briefly with the Durham Light Infantry in the First World War, Gaunt went on to Worcester College, Oxford, and graduated with honours. He completed an MA at the Ruskin School of Drawing and found work as a painter, art historian, art critic, novelist and travel book writer.
During the Second World War he was commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to paint London city bomb sites.
Gaunt was drawn to the Pre-Raphaelites, whom he considered to be underappreciated, and wrote his most enduring book on the subject, The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy (1942), followed by further studies of Victorian art, The Aesthetic Adventure (1945) and Victorian Olympus (1952).
After serving briefly with the Durham Light Infantry in the First World War, Gaunt went on to Worcester College, Oxford, and graduated with honours. He completed an MA at the Ruskin School of Drawing and found work as a painter, art historian, art critic, novelist and travel book writer.
During the Second World War he was commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to paint London city bomb sites.
Gaunt was drawn to the Pre-Raphaelites, whom he considered to be underappreciated, and wrote his most enduring book on the subject, The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy (1942), followed by further studies of Victorian art, The Aesthetic Adventure (1945) and Victorian Olympus (1952).
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 2, 2016
A wonderful introduction to artistic ideologies of the late nineteenth century. Emphasis is on English developments, although the French background to these ideas is sketched in. A number of representative individuals are singled out for closer examination, but this is a history of ideas, not personalities; similarly, there is little here about individual works of art, the focus being on what artists thought. Although the visual arts are central to the discussion, Gaunt does not slight literature, with Swinburne, Wilde and a few others getting special scrutiny. He does not discuss the Symbolist movement or Art Nouveau in any detail.
In a previous volume Gaunt had covered the Pre-Raphaelites; here they are seen as an appealing but waning force, bested by the advent of "aestheticism", a package of attitudes ranging from the obvious ("art for art's sake") to the less well-known (contempt for the masses, self-absorption, social cruelty). Gaunt does a splendid job of explaining why the aesthetes were seen as repulsive by both progressives and conservatives. Since most historians blindly favour the aesthetes, I found this a fascinating corrective. The book is vividly written, and nearly every page furnishes insights which provide invaluable context to artistic creations of the period.
Parenthetically, I've been copying out an important letter from Lovecraft to the publisher of
Weird Tales which surfaced recently, and it's startling to note that the artistic credo he lays out therein reflects almost verbatim the pronouncements of English aesthetes of the 1880s and 90s. It seems to me that Lovecraft cherished those ideals in the abstract more than he successfully applied them in his writings. But it's interesting that (according to Gaunt) later practitioners of aestheticism developed an intentional crudity, even savagery, in their work, as they relinquished their predecessors' focus on atmosphere in favour of penetrating to a Truth behind surface appearances; Is it reasonable to consider Lovecraft as representing a similar sort of transitional figure, between the subtle Edwardian masters of atmosphere and the philosophical bleakness and visceral horror of modern weird fiction?
In a previous volume Gaunt had covered the Pre-Raphaelites; here they are seen as an appealing but waning force, bested by the advent of "aestheticism", a package of attitudes ranging from the obvious ("art for art's sake") to the less well-known (contempt for the masses, self-absorption, social cruelty). Gaunt does a splendid job of explaining why the aesthetes were seen as repulsive by both progressives and conservatives. Since most historians blindly favour the aesthetes, I found this a fascinating corrective. The book is vividly written, and nearly every page furnishes insights which provide invaluable context to artistic creations of the period.
Parenthetically, I've been copying out an important letter from Lovecraft to the publisher of
Weird Tales which surfaced recently, and it's startling to note that the artistic credo he lays out therein reflects almost verbatim the pronouncements of English aesthetes of the 1880s and 90s. It seems to me that Lovecraft cherished those ideals in the abstract more than he successfully applied them in his writings. But it's interesting that (according to Gaunt) later practitioners of aestheticism developed an intentional crudity, even savagery, in their work, as they relinquished their predecessors' focus on atmosphere in favour of penetrating to a Truth behind surface appearances; Is it reasonable to consider Lovecraft as representing a similar sort of transitional figure, between the subtle Edwardian masters of atmosphere and the philosophical bleakness and visceral horror of modern weird fiction?
March 14, 2021
Fun and insightful; and I finally found out what drove Monet to London... of course, it was the Franco-Prussian war. Gaunt tracks the people who visited Paris in the late 1800s, searching for something more, and their return to London having seen Degas, Monet - having read Gautier, Huysmans... and the challenges they then mounted against to Victorianism, and the establishment's outrage. It interesting how many of those were somewhat rootless, somewhat adrift - such as Moore, the Irish landlord; Wilde; Whistler, the unhappy American. Of course, it ends with the new art of Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin - and inspiring the old revolutionaries' outrage, in turn. The destabilising shock of the new.
March 23, 2012
De escándalo es la traducción. :-S
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews