Baudelaire

Charles Pierre Baudelaire was an influential nineteenth century French poet, critic and acclaimed translator. He was called the father of modern criticism, who shocked his contemporaries with his visions of lust and decay. Baudelaire's influence on the direction of modern French (and English) language literature was considerable. Whatever was consider beautiful for society at that time it was considered ugly for him or vise versa. He underscored what society was against. Spiritual, or emotional reality had much more value than anything else for him. He believed that the modern painters or artists should be Flaneur meaning that somebody who spends all his time looking and observing the world all day and all night. In order to do that they need time and money, which means they did not care about any commissions and painted art for art sake. So they needed to be wealthy to search the world around. Another assumption was that going far anywhere in 19th century was completely restricted for women. For example, women could not go to cafés and the only places that they could go where Opera or park with several people. Therefore painters had to be males in a very detached style. Because Baudelair believed that if you are not part of the people who are looking at something, you would be able to see things, that you wouldn’t other wise see if were embedded in it. He also talked about modernity. There are two prerequisites for paintings that are representing modernity. Half of the art should consider fugitive, contingent and ephemeral, meaning that currently, spontaneously happening and transitory. The other half of the art should consider eternal and immutable, meaning that the subject matter should be love, emotion, suffering, grief, fear, lost and anger. All of them are raw feelings they may change over time but always it is going be immutable. So beauty is not eternal it changes all time. For example, Goya’s piece (Saturn devouring his children) is eternal, because it shows suffering and emotion.
He also talked about how artists should use their own imagination. He mentioned lazy artists just copy costumes or other things only from past and from Greco-roman mythology. They are not doing anything new. The real artists should look around the world at the texture or all the details and put it into paintings. Baudelair said it had problem with Ingres paintings. His paintings are all artificial and are not real, in term of costumes, mythology and gestures.

Charles Pierre Baudelaire talked about society. He is talking about many ladies were going to opera looked aristocratic, pretty and gorgeous in many senses. They had beautiful jewelries, well done hair and beautiful dresses. They seem to be looking at the opera but in reality that’s not what they are looking at. They are just looking at distance, that’s all. When you look at her she looks like society, society is definition of beautiful. At first glance you think she lacks nothing else at all. Everything represents the entire element in society. Therefore, she lacks nothing outside, but truly she lacks everything inside. She has no distinction at all. They look beautiful, but if you take a closer look there is nothing there valuable like society.
He also talked about men too. Aristocratic men look artificial too. Barbers created top of his bodies and bottom of his bodies were also created by tailors. So they have been created.
France was not a fashionable country before 1850’s and 1860’s. Paris was a ghettos place, which had no sewerage. It was a place for all immigrants, gypsies and homeless people. So people never wanted to go there because they thought they could have some diseases, so only people could not live anywhere else lived there. Napoleon the third hired Haussmann. Napoleon wanted Paris to be a cosmopolitan city and a good capital. So he asked Haussmann to renovate the Paris. He created and instituted Haussmanization or urbanization. He created contracts for private owners to bring their department store. He made the Paris we all know now. Everything built: cafes operas, parks and bridges. So there was no differentiation between people’s class. Everybody looked the same and they had the same cloths. Because the visual fabric of Paris changed the social fabric changed too. Therefore, Baudelair said look around and capture the new world instead of looking in the past only. There is something so amazingly going on. So individuals and people who lived in Paris at that time, they did not live for themselves, or they did not exist for themselves they lived for pleasure of other’s. Paris became a place for people watching, getting everybody’s attention. All people, prostitutes did not have anything to offer the society. All prostitutes looked pretty and happy. None of them are real or none of them are eternal. If you take a closer look at the bottom of all of them, there is nothing to exist. If you look at their faces there is a joy there as being alive regardless as anything else. That is real and true beauty. That is what Baudelair wanted that all painters of modern art should look in places that they don’t expect at all.
Before 1850’s and 1860’s, if was easy to identify and recognize the person you were looking at. They were all homeless and gypsy people. But now by the way they dressed no longer is recognizable person’s class. Because everything was purchasable it was hard to say what part of society the belonged.
Guy was an artist that Baudelair elevated his habit. Because he looked around the world and he did things in sketches. He used watercolor instead of pencil because it was quick, rapid and spontaneously. He tried to catch a feeling or gesture all the time. So Baudelair liked him because of the way he looked at world. On the other hand Ingres was not creative at all in his paintings.
In Manet’s The Old Musician, all individuals are on the same canvas from all different level of society but they have noting to do with each other and there is no relationship between them at all. It represented of Paris, people lived on the same space with no relationship whatsoever. There is no link between them. It was new kind of social relationship of Paris at that time after Haussmanization.