For Aestheticism, the struggle between life and art is over, and art has won. But the attitude towards this victory is ambiguous. Art might be the redemption of a life improperly lived, but it also might be the insidious source of... [more]

For Aestheticism, the struggle between life and art is over, and art has won. But the attitude towards this victory is ambiguous. Art might be the redemption of a life improperly lived, but it also might be the insidious source of unfortunate simulations: the life captured in art is admired even as it atrophies. Art is the superior force; it draws life up into it, transforms it, supercedes it -- but the effects of this force aren't always so admirable. Life pales in comparison to art, without a doubt; but would life have more color without it? Flaubert's characters struggle to achieve the life they see represented in works of art. Madame Bovary aspires towards the ideals she finds in novels -- once invested in living up to them, she gets nothing but diminishing returns. Literary capital turns out to be counterfeit money. And Flaubert saw this unfortunate economy working not only in society, but within himself as well. "I've dissected myself to the quick," he said, remarking on his own process of writing. Having discovered the aspirations at the base of his own art, he set himself to portraying them cynically in every one of his characters. All art is an act of simulation, sucking the color out of the artists' cheeks and leaving nothing but banality behind. Proust's perspective is certainly different. Life without art remains unredeemed, a life of wasted time. This might say something about the particular life of Proust, but it might also say something about the redeeming capacity of art. Proust lifts the past into the lofty domain of literature, where it shines in page-long sentences and moves in a rhythm that life could never mimic. The economy of art supercedes that of life because it preserves, it captures, it gathers within itself what life lets slip away. The artist doesn't imitate, but transforms and is transformed. Aestheticism concerns itself almost exclusively with this transformation. Every work of art takes on a life of its own, which may alternately ennoble or degrade its own creator. It usurps the reality of its referent. Autonomous, it becomes frightening, monstrous, a veritable picture of Dorian Gray. Or its own beauty mocks the ugliness of the artist. In either case, its relation to the life it has dominated becomes ambiguous. Aestheticism wanders perpetually and perhaps aimlessly in the space of this ambiguity. [show less]