Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. There is a small repared tear on the back of the dustcover but book is otherwise like new. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900 focuses on a period in the nineteenth century when a group of artists. architects and designers found themselves united in the search for a new Beauty. The Aesthetic Movement as it came to be known sought nothing less than the creation of a new kind of art an art freed from outworn establishment ideas and Victorian notions of morality. This was to be ‘Art for Art’s sake-art that did not tell stories or make moral points art that dared simply to offer visual delight and hint at sensuous pleasure. This new and exciting ‘Cult of Beauty’ united for a while at least romantic bohemians such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Morris and Edward Bume-Jones along with maverick figures such James McNeill Whistler and painters of grand classical subjects who belonged to the circle of Frederic Leighton. The Cult of Beauty brings together the finest pictures furniture and decorative arts of this extraordinary era setting them in the context of this glitter- ing cast of characters. The book also reveals how artists’ houses their collections of beautiful things and their extravagant lifestyles became the object of public fascination. The influence of the ‘Palaces of Art’ created by Rossetti and Morris Lord Leighton and others led to a widespread revolution in architecture and interior decora- tion. Oscar Wilde made his name promoting the idea of ‘The House Beautiful’ and the styles favoured by Aesthetic designers were among in Britain. the very first to be widely exploited commercially (OS)