Someone put Charles in charge of Rolling Stone

i find it odd that “The Painter of Modern Life” sounds so contemporary, and so desperately relevant even now.  Instead of despairing the society around him that fosters falsity or alienation, Baudelaire is cheerily able to laud Monsieur G. and his work.

I appreciated, too, Baudelaire’s succintness; which has been a breath of fresh air after the somewhat stilted readings of Nietzche or Freud.  I find for all his enthusiasm, though, Baudelaire hits upon something extremely valuable to the discussion of modernism.  I found an expertly crafted passage on page 24 of the article:

“Once more to attempt a definition of the kind of subjects preferred by our artist, we would say that it is the outward show of life, such as it is to be seen in the capitals of the civilized world; the pageantry of military life, of fashion and of love. Wherever those deep, impetuous desires, war, love, and gaming, are in full flood, like Orinocos of the human heart; wherever are celebrated the festivals and fictions which embody these great elements of happiness and adversity, our observer is always punctually on the spot.” [emphasis mine]

I find this passage important because it attempts to pin down what we seem to have been coming around to – that immediacy of modernity that is at once deeply personal, but also visibly made plain by….what?  How can Monsieur G. communicate his own sense of beauty to the viewer?  Certainly Baudelaire has seen it, and agrees.  But does this mean that beauty is in-set, or is it still determined by our own circumstances and context?

I find this passage as meaningful as it is troubling.

 (as to the title of the post, I think honesty and enthusiasm such as Baudelaire’s would be a great service to some our current popular culture publications.  Take note, Rolling Stone Magazine.)

 - Steve Woodhead

Change is good

Baudelaire makes some interesting comments on the idea of contemporaneity as it applies to our idea of what is modern.  If we are painting today, doesn’t that make whatever we create a ‘modern’ work of art? We did not create something 200 years ago, we created it now, which gives it a status of contemporary at the very least. Why does what we create determine the status of the creation? According to Baudelaire, if I create a picture of the last supper and put all the people in contemporary clothes, that would be a modern work of art; but if I were to paint a picture of boys playing, and put the subjects in 17th century clothing, that would not be a modern work of art because it does not reflect the modern period, even though I painted it in the modern period.

So how do we give a definition to what is modern? Is it only things that reflect the current society? or can it be a reflection of what the current society thinks. If we believe that our own fashion is terrible, and wear nothing but 60’s style clothing, we are ‘living in the past’, even though we are quite obviously living along side our more ‘fashionable’ critics.

In order to be considered modern, a person must embrace the fast-paced world around them. Baudelaire says that modernity is transient, fleeting and contingent. SO perhaps the only requirement for being modern is that a person must have no regrets. If you live with a forward outlook, never looking back, and embracing change, maybe that is what modernity truly means.

 Annaliese

Fabulous photos of Baudelaire

Nadar, Baudelaire, 1855-58.

Baudelaire on photography: “I know very well that some people will retort, “The disease which you have just been diagnosing is a disease of imbeciles. What man worthy of the name of artist, and what true connoisseur, has ever confused art with industry?” I know it; and yet I will ask them in my turn if they believe in the contagion of good and evil, in the action of the mass on individuals, and in the involuntary, forced obedience of the individual to the mass. It is an incontestable, an irresistible law that the artist should act upon the public, and that the public should react upon the artist; and besides, those terrible witnesses, the facts, are easy to study; the disaster is verifiable. Each day art further diminishes its self-respect by bowing down be­fore external reality; each day the painter becomes more and more given to painting not what he dreams but what he sees. Nevertheless it is a happiness to dream, and it used to be a glory to express what one dreamt. But I ask you! does the painter still know this happiness?

Could you find an honest observer to declare that the invasion of photography and the great industrial mad­ness of our times have no part at all in this deplorable result? Are we to suppose that a people whose eyes are growing used to considering the results of a material sci­ence as though they were the products of the beautiful, will not in the course of time have singularly diminished its faculties of judging and of feeling what are among the most ethereal and immaterial aspects of creation?”

– Salon, 1859

Baudelaire sat for world-famous portrait photographer Nadar several times in the mid-1850s. Is this the “invasion of photography,” the “industrial madness” that Baudelaire decries? Or, does it show “judging and feeling,” those qualities that belonged to a true art, the “ethereal and immaterial aspects of creation?”

Nadar, Baudelaire, 1856.

 

What do you think? Is he a dandy as he describes it in “The Painter of Modern Life”?

 

Etienne Carjat, Baudelaire, c. 1863. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

– Prof. Steer