by Jon Lackman | 19 December 2008 | Books
In caa.reviews, Susan P. Casteras reviews Jason Edwards’s Alfred Gilbert’s Aestheticism: Gilbert Amongst Whistler, Wilde, Leighton, Pater and Burne-Jones and Elizabeth Prettejohn’s Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting:
[They] exemplify newer methodological approaches in Victorian art, a blend of the intertextual and historical, and each superbly succeeds in diverse ways. Edwards’s book challenges preexisting assumptions that Aestheticism did not embrace the realm of sculpture and reinscribes the question dramatically … From its initial paragraphs’ dazzling reading of homosexual subtexts in the coded language of a letter from Gilbert to Whistler, to the solid historical review of the literature on Aestheticism, the introduction presents an intellectually rigorous foundation and provides a glimpse into how different and revealing Edwards’s approach will be … Ultimately, Alfred Gilbert’s Aestheticism is an impressive and densely rich book … Edwards’s attention to detail is astounding, as are his multivalent and masterful close readings of text, history, correspondence, social encodings of behavior and place, and scores of other hidden cues, all of which have been carefully and sensitively retrieved and re-presented … there is no doubt whatsoever that Edwards himself has created a highly original publication …
Another stellar publication that explores new terrain is Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting by Prettejohn, a powerhouse of scholarship who in the last decade has written many compelling books that make significant contributions to the field of Victorian art. Art for Art’s Sake not only qualifies as a major contender in its own right, but also makes an excellent pendant for Edwards’s book, with the latter serving as a kind of sequel to the intellectual territory that Prettejohn covers. Both authors apply intertextual approaches very effectively and treat some overlapping material, and Edwards mentions in his own book Prettejohn’s example as a source of inspiration … While Art for Art’s Sake lacks a proper conclusion, it is nonetheless filled with trenchant new ideas matched by a complex and compelling series of brilliant arguments …
