Concept of Arts(Part IV):
Moreover, Charles Baudelaire was one of the first authors who analyzed the relationship of art to the newly emerging industrial era, foreshadowing the concept of "modern beauty": there is the eternal and absolute beauty, but every concept of beauty has something eternal and something transitory, something absolute, something special. Beauty comes from the passion and, as each individual's particular passion, it also has its own concept of beauty. In its relationship with art, beauty on the one hand express an idea "eternally subsisting", which would be the "soul of art" and the other a relative, circumstantial element, which is the "body of art." Thus, the duality of art is an expression of the duality of man, his desire for a perfect happiness faced with the passions that move him toward her. Facing the eternal half, anchored in the classic art old, Baudelaire saw in half on the modern art, whose distinguishing marks are the transitory, the fleeting, the ephemeral and changeable-synthesized in the fashion -. Baudelaire was a concept Neoplatonic beauty, which is the human aspiration toward a higher ideal, accessible through art. The artist is the "hero of modernity" whose main characteristic is the melancholy, which is the yearning for ideal beauty.
The Artist's Studio (1855), of Gustave Courbet.
In contrast to aestheticism, Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine formulated a theory sociology of art in his Philosophy of Art (1865-1869) applied to art a determinism based on race, the context and the time (race, milieu, moment). For Taine, aesthetics, the "science of art, operates like any other scientific discipline, based on rational and empirical parameters. Similarly, Jean Marie Guyau in problems of contemporary aesthetics (1884) and art from a sociological perspective (1888), proposed a vision of evolution of art, saying that art is life, and as it evolves and, like human life is socially organized, art should reflect society.
The sociological aesthetics had a great relationship with the visual realism and leftist political movements, especially the utopian socialism: authors such as Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Pierre Joseph Proudhon advocated the social function of art, which contributes to the development of society, combining beauty and utility in a harmonious whole. Moreover, in the United Kingdom, the work of theorists such as John Ruskin and William Morris provided an overview functionalist of art in The Stones of Venice (1851-1856) Ruskin denounced the destruction of beauty and popularization of art carried out by industrial society and the degradation of the working class, defending the social function of art. In The Art of the People (1879) called for radical changes in the economy and society, claiming an art "made by the people and for the people." For his part, Morris-founder of the movement Arts & Crafts - art defended a functional, practical, meets needs not only spiritual and material. In aesthetic Writings (1882-1884) and The purposes of art (1887) planted a utilitarian concept of art but away from technology-intensive production systems too, next to a concept of socialism close to corporatism medieval.