Approaching an Aestheticist Manifesto
It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.
Oscar Wilde
Inside every human being is the eternity of imagination. From this endless reservoir, we have spawned our greatest ideas, our greatest religions, our greatest societies, and our greatest Art. Inside of us lives the world that we can understand, the world of our ideals, the world of what matters.
And yet our creative, artistic faculties are being controlled everywhere we look.
Popularity, politics, fear towards the new, disgust towards the old--everywhere lurks the forces holding us back from creating the complexes we see inside ourselves.
Let us put an end to this restraint, an end to this boredom! For too long have we been drugged out of our natures--for Man is the Aesthetic animal, and in every one of us is the thirst--the thirst for dreams & nightmares, the thirst for stories, the thirst for contact with the impossible, the thirst for Beauty!
Too long have we been led by false standards: the political, the "safe", the "right". Enough of these limitations of mind!
We will pry open the obscure and forgotten--the old gods, the old landscapes, the old desires; and we will create from this collective, endless reservoir projects of such Beauty never seen before!
It is time we bring back our focus on Art! Literature, poetry, music, film, and all other forms allowed by production and our information landscape.
It is time again, for the old standard: Beauty!
Manifesto of Aestheticism
Our considerations in life will no longer be reason, fact, or orthodoxy, but Beauty, Imagination, and Debate!
All analysis and criticism will be filtered through the first, and only real significant question: Is It Beautiful?
We will seek an end to didacticism and morality as the standard of quality.
Aesthetics, and Aesthetics only, are what make any work of Art great and worthy of investment.
We will be fearless in our exposure to all types of Art, regardless of medium, regardless of subject matter, and regardless of offense to the particular tastes of our time.
All considerations will be subordinate to Beauty.
We will defend the idiosyncratic, and disagreement will be shared openly and with curiosity.
Surface is the prime subject, and whatever depth found under will be perfunctory.
The Aesthetic will be our guide: in Art, in life, in public, and in our private minds.
We will be slaves to Form, and happily cry: Art for Art's sake!
Come with us and peak at Beauty! The Beauty of the paint stroke, the alliteration in the verse, the crescendos of the orchestra, and the grain in the celluloid.
Contrary to what they may say, here is the home of history, here is the home of empathy, here is the home of freedom!
If they call Aestheticism a desert, then we are the prideful desert people.
If they call "Art for Art's sake" a sewer, then we are its sewer rats.
If they call Imagination a heresy, then we are the cursed heretical!
Line your walls with the paintings of Picasso, staple the verses of Homer in your notebooks, fill your bookshelves with the best ever written, and share the greatest imaginings we have ever created.
Ours is the future of the (im)possible. Ours is the future of purpose. Ours is the return to home. Ours is the freeing of the human spirit!
The world will be our canvas, and the colors of Red, Purple, Green, and Gold will overflow our desolate streets in a frenzy never seen before!
We will go to the mountaintop and feel the blessed sun bearing on our shoulders and sing the loudest that has ever been sung: “Here, we open our worlds of Imagination!”
Fiery the angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd.
Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc.
William Blake