Decadence
This term generally refers to any period of artistic or moral degradation, and specifically to a particular aesthetic movement which broke out in France during the 19th century. Major characteristics of this movement were the emphasis on the artist’s isolation, the rivalry for the civil society and the preference for everything macabre or twisted. All these elements were largely an extension of the ideas of Romanticism and they first became visible in the “Flowers of Evil” of Baudelaire, reached its peak in the two last decades of the 19th century and condensed in the book of Ysman A’, called “Rebours” and in the ephemeral journal, called “The decadent” (Le Decadent). In England, major representatives of the relevant movement were Oscar Wilde and Beardsley.