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Baudelaire's Modernity and Genre Painting

Hyosil Yang 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The Modernity of Baudelaire as the mental base of Modernism, needs a revision from the aesthetics of transiency to that of the transfiguration of reality by the artist's aesthetic competence. His essay in 1863 entitled ‘the painter of modern life’ includes both definitions but until now the implication of the latter has been forgotten because of the power and influence of modernist theorists. The Postmodern reading changes the meaning of Baudelaire's modernity. By the concept of Modernity, Baudelaire formulates the theory of the art of modern life. In his view, the new art should be independent of moral value, which exists prior to the artistic practice and constrains it. The proper value of art lies in its ability to make the actual the aesthetic. Baudelaire's modernity posits art as the aesthetization of the actuality. He despises the modern values such as progress, utopian future, and utility. So He rids the art of the moral values of his time and gives it sovereignty and autonomy. The modern artist referred to as "the painter of modern life" by Baudelaire was an anonymous genre painter C. Guys, not the great artists like Courbet or Manet. Baudelaire did know his modernity's painter belonged to the category of minor art or a vulgar culture. Baudelaire gives C. Guys various names such as ‘dandy,’ ‘convalescent,’ ‘man among the world,’ ‘flâneur’ so on. Before drawing and painting at the studio, C. Guys experiences street scenes and absorbs the essence of life, and then he returns to the studio. Baudelaire calls his "finished" painting a sketch. It is not a painting in the strict sense of painting because it looks like an unfinished drawing. Baudelaire's modernity does not fall on the context of the tradition of art. His concern is not about what art is but about the new method of art to represent modern life. Baudelaire's action of naming C. Guys ‘the painter of modern life’is very calculating and correct. It is outside the tradition of Modernism criticism. So the postmodern reading of Baudelaire reveals the gap between the appropriation of Baudelaire by Modernism and the real implication of his Modernity. It restores the authentic significance of Baudelaire's theory of art concentrating on the transcendence over modern life by artistic transfiguration. What the painter of modern life, not the modern painter, thinks important is primarily how to represent modern life not how to rupture the traditional techniques of art.

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