Analysis Of The Painter Of The Modern Life By Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire author of “The Painter of the Modern Life”, believes a modern artist should fully engage with the contemporary world by acting as an observer and supporter of the present moment. A modern artist should focus on all that is contemporary, from fashion to technology, excluding all historical and classical subject matter. I believe Pierre Bonnard meets Baudelaire’s standards as a “painter of modern life”. Bonnard is an artist who is inspired by day to day life. He found the present moment to be important and because of that, he often painted from memory. In Baudelaire’s essay, he discusses an artist by the name of Constantin Guys and uses him as an example of what he believes to be a modern artist. Guys’ artistic process is
His father died in 1827 and his mother remarried a year later. Due to his mother’s remarrying, Baudelaire was no longer the sole focus of his mother which deeply affected him. He received his degree in 1839 from Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. His stepfather wanted him to pursue a career in law, but instead, Baudelaire chose the literary career. Throughout Baudelaire’s life, he completed many literary works and became a French symbolist poet and art critic. Although Baudelaire travelled very little and his knowledge of painting was limited to what he could see in Paris, he presented a highly sophisticated aesthetic theory of beauty. Baudelaire has two important themes which are the attractiveness of fashion and pleasure of the present. He was extremely interested in modern art and how he believes one has to be fully engaged in the contemporary world and be an observer of the present. Through his theory, he explains that there is no pure presence because every experience carries along earlier experiences. In Baudelaire’s essay, he defines a flaneur who is an ideal modern artist because they are the observer, philosopher, moralist, traveller and novelist who records moment. This means drawing from what you remember and putting your own experience within the art. The product then becomes individual to one’s
1), was created in 1896 using oil on cardboard. Bonnard’s painting is currently on display at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco. Speaking on the formal qualities of the painting, Bonnard paints this work from a higher perspective than the performance itself. As discussed earlier in the essay, he likes to play with perspective to make the painting individual to his style. Despite this odd choice of perspective, you can still clearly see each movement of the ballerinas similar to how it would be if Bonnard were to have painted it at the same level as the performance. In this work, Bonnard uses shades of grayish-blue with swift and fuzzy strokes giving off a charming