The idea that beauty can be made to serve some other purpose — selling some product or idea for example — is naturally repellent to many of us. There seems to be in the human heart an inherent belief that beauty should exist for its own sake, or at least be free from practical considerations.
This was the premise of the Aesthetic Movement, a loosely defined tendency in 19th-century European art, which operated under the slogan of "art for art's sake" and believed that beauty was the end, not the means.
It is ironic, then, that "The Beautiful: the Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900," an exhibition at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum dedicated to the British aspect of this movement, should be sourced and organized by the Victoria & Albert Museum, because the original impetus behind the creation of that illustrious institution was the exact opposite of art for art's sake.