Victorian art criticism on the notion of ‘modern’

The object of analysis is the notion of ‘modern’ in Victorian art criticism of the 1840s - 1870s. The article follows its subtle changes with the consequence of crucial change in the habits of thought, namely modernization. In Victorian art criticism a “crystallization” (J. Habermas) of the present took place, when modernity started to “exist in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier” and to attain the ideal state of “a true present” (P. de Man). Works by Ruskin, Arnold and Pater are scrutinized, with special attention given to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns the way it was continued by the critics. The Moderns pretended to become “the real ancients” taking their place in the canon, and even more than that, they began to think of the canon as of a subject to change. The process of modernization, as far as aesthetic experience is concerned, consists in the transition from the notion of eternal beauty to the idea of irregularities, minute particulars as “sources of beauty”. Feeling every moment intensely - attaining the “true present” - later became the basis of modernism.