It began in early-2010s internet music and art communities: music that slowed and warped '90s mall muzak, and a nostalgia for early Windows and Nintendo-era low-fi 3D graphics, both handled without earnest sincerity. Its signature image is a Greco-Roman marble bust set alongside symbols of capitalist consumer culture — palm trees, checkerboard floors, Japanese text.
Visually it's pastel pink against cyan, a checkered floor grid, low-resolution pixel and glitch type, and typography mixing full-width Japanese characters with English. The word "AESTHETIC" itself became the movement's signature meme.
Today it's used less as a fine-art movement and more as a visual palette shorthand — a wallpaper mood, an album-cover feel. It appears scoped into fashion and music brand campaigns going for a retro, ironic edge.