A Brief Summary of The Painter of Modern Life by Charles Baudelaire
Transcript:
Charles Baudelaire's essay The Painter of Modern Life (1863) is a foundational text in the study of art and aesthetics, offering a nuanced examination of modernity and its representation in visual art. Baudelaire begins by reflecting on the artist's role in society, asserting that the true artist is both a product of his time and a visionary capable of transcending it. For Baudelaire, the artist’s task is not to replicate nature, but to extract beauty from the present moment and imbue it with a timeless quality. The artist serves as a "translator" of modernity, mediating between the fleeting nature of contemporary life and the eternal qualities of art.
This process requires the artist to be a keen observer, one capable of capturing not only the outward appearance of things but also their deeper, more elusive meanings. Baudelaire's admiration for Constantin Guys is rooted in the belief that Guys embodies this ideal. He considers Guys a chronicler of modern life, an artist who uncovers beauty in the ordinary and transforms everyday urban scenes into visual poetry.
A central concept in Baudelaire’s essay is modernity itself. He defines modernity as "the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent” (pg. 13) —the transient nature of life in an industrialized, urban society. However, modernity, for Baudelaire, is not merely a historical period but an attitude, a mode of perceiving the world. It is the artist's duty to capture the essence of the fleeting moment and distill from it something eternal.
To articulate this, Baudelaire introduces the figure of the flâneur, the quintessential modern artist who navigates the city with detached observation, discovering inspiration in the mundane aspects of daily life. The flâneur is a spectator, not a participant, who absorbs the spectacles of urban existence with dispassionate curiosity and transforms them into art. Baudelaire views this ability to be both within and apart from the world as central to the modern artist’s craft.
The modern city, in Baudelaire's view, is the ideal setting for the artist, constantly in motion and offering an endless stream of new experiences, fashions, and scenes. The flâneur collects these impressions, transforming them into artistic works that reflect the complexities of modern life.
Baudelaire also examines the relationship between beauty and fashion, both of which he sees as integral to modernity. He argues that beauty is not a fixed, eternal ideal but is shaped by the culture and time in which it exists. Fashion, as a manifestation of modernity, becomes a crucial element in the creation of beauty. For Baudelaire, fashion is not trivial; it is a form of artistic expression, reflecting society’s changing tastes and moods.
Constantin Guys, as Baudelaire portrays him, excels in capturing the ephemeral nature of beauty as expressed through fashion. His sketches of women in elegant dresses or men in military uniforms are not mere depictions of individuals but representations of an entire cultural moment. In this way, Guys’ work epitomizes the transient beauty of the modern world.
Throughout the essay, Baudelaire emphasizes the tension between the eternal and the transient, a theme central to modernist thought. He argues that the artist must find a way to fuse the two, taking the fleeting experiences of modern life and imbuing them with a sense of permanence.This synthesis of the ephemeral and the eternal constitutes, for Baudelaire, the essence of modern art.
In his admiration for Guys, Baudelaire recognizes an artist who masterfully achieves this balance. Guys captures the ever-changing world of modern life—the fashions, the public spectacles, the everyday activities of the city—while endowing his work with a timeless quality. This ability to elevate the everyday into something enduring is, for Baudelaire, what makes Guys the ideal example of the painter of modern life.
To introduce "Modernism" to someone unfamiliar with the movement, I would choose Pablo Picasso's Guernica and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane as exemplary artifacts.
Guernica (1937), which was painted as a response to the bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, epitomizes modernism’s break with classical forms and its embrace of abstraction to express inner truths and emotional intensity. Picasso abandons traditional perspective and proportionality, instead fragmenting and distorting figures to evoke the brutality and disarray of war. The stark contrast between black, white, and grey emphasizes a sense of desolation and anguish, reflecting modernist themes of alienation and disillusionment in the face of the violence of modern life. These themes resonate with contemporary concerns about conflict, state violence, and human suffering as a result of war, making the painting a timeless critique of the destructive powers of modernity.
Citizen Kane (1941) similarly reflects modernist aesthetics and themes in its innovative use of non-linear narrative, deep focus cinematography, and chiaroscuro lighting. The film’s fragmented structure, where the protagonist’s life is revealed through multiple, often contradictory perspectives, mirrors modernism’s preoccupation with the subjectivity of experience and the unreliability of objective truth. Thematically, Welles explores the emptiness of wealth and power, the decay of individual identity, and the isolating effects of ambition—all quintessential modernist concerns about the alienating forces of capitalism and modern society. The film’s examination of how politics and media influence and shape public perception connects it to contemporary conversations about the influence of technology on identity and reality, ensuring its relevance in the modern digital age.
Both works push the boundaries of their respective mediums, embodying modernism’s quest to challenge conventional modes of representation and convey the complexities of modern existence in the wake of industrialization and commodification.
I would like to emphasize that modernism and modernist artifacts encompass not only the art itself but also the machinery that facilitated the mass production of art. Two significant industrial artifacts that illustrate this point are the printing press and the Steenbeck editing machine, both of which played crucial roles in their respective mediums.
