Monday, February 8, 2016
Baudelaire: "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne"
A paper on the art of Constantin Guys, who remains unidentified except by initials M.G.
- Distinguishes two necessary elements of beauty/art: an "eternal" and a "circumstantial" element. The latter consists of "contemporaneity, fashion, morality, passion": in short, "modernity"
- Every age has its own particular beauty--its "idiom of beauty," its "characteristic grace"--reflected in the styles, the morals, the gestures, and the features of its people
- Minor painters, including M.G. (unlike classical poets and artists, who express "general beauty") are worthy of our attention for their depictions of this type of beauty. The goal, brilliantly achieved by M.G., is "to extract from fashion the poetry that resides in its historical envelope, to distil the eternal from the transitory" (402).
- Originality comes from "the stamp that time impresses on our sensibility" (405)
MINOR POINTS:
- Describes "M.G."'s artistic temperament as reflecting "the spiritual condition of the convalescent." "Convalescence is like a return to childhood": "the child sees everything as a novelty; the child is always 'drunk'"--397-8
- dandies--399, 419-422
- crowds--399-400
- "barbarousness" in art--childlike perfection, "bigness" in representation--406
- Each profession (like each age) has its own sort of beauty "draw[n] from the moral laws that govern it"; this is the "emblem of [its] character"--417
- Describes beauty and all good tendencies as inherently artificial and reasoned. Praises women's makeup--425-428
-Useful: The "third sex" (eunuchs, etc.) is an idea from Balzac
-Personally interesting: Baudelaire on makeup: "[P]ainting the face is not to be used with the vulgar, unavowable intention of imitating the fair face of nature, or competing with youth. It has, moreover, been observed that artifice does not embellish ugliness, and can only serve beauty. Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature? Make-up has no need of concealment, no need to avoid discovery; on the contrary, it can go in for display, if not with affectation, at least with a sort of ingenuousness"--428. Discusses particular makeup products like rice-powder, red blush and black eyeliner on earlier pages. The goal is an almost mythical look.
Selected Writings on Art & Artists, trans. P. E. Charvet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
