leisure time and consumerism—flâneur
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Transcript of leisure time and consumerism—flâneur
P R O J E C T S E V E N
leisure time and consumerism—flâneur
The brief for this project was to research the term flâneur. Pointers included
making notes on the phenomenon; looking at what thinkers like Walter Benjamin
said about it; and contemplating what effect the flâneur and the practice of
flânerie had on the world of the artist in Western society in the latter part of the
19th century
The preamble in the course notes mentions increasing leisure time, and an
increase in disposable income for most. This, together with the mass-produced
image and falling prices in technology was leading to a democratisation of art—in
that people had time and money to view and produce arts, craft and photographs.
There is also mention of the development of department stores and of shopping,
or window-shopping, as an activity—which could mark the beginning of
consumerism.
project
At its most basic level; a flâneur, or the practise of flânerie, is associated with the
action of strolling, and is underpinned in modern critical theory by the writings of
Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin. However, there have been so many re-
interpretations of the term, that Gluck states that ‘contemporary critical
discussions have produced as many images of the flâneur as there are
conceptions of the modern.’ (Gluck, 2003, p.53); Brooker argues that the original
concept is no longer recognisable in its current iteration (Brooker, 1999, p.115);
and for Tester, ‘the precise meaning and significance of flânerie remains more
than a little elusive’ (Tester, 1994, p.1).
Consequently, a simple one-size-fits-all definition of the flâneur is impossible—
although some characteristics of the nineteenth century flâneur1 remain constant
—he was male, resided in Paris, functioned in public spaces, and provided a
commentary and explanation of modern life.
The emergence of the flâneur is more easily understood against the backdrop of
the rapidly changing economic and social landscape in Paris2 during the
nineteenth century. Industrialisation had led to the creation of a new urban space
—cities and their populations grew as people migrated from rural areas. Wealth
created from industry and commerce, coupled with the lessening of the role of
the aristocracy following the French Revolution, resulted in the growth of the
bourgeoisie, and the crowd in the urban area. New shopping and meeting places
were developed—the Paris Arcades, railway stations, museums, exhibition halls,
boulevards, shops and cafes3; and in the mid-nineteenth century, the first
department stores—all providing public spaces for people to meet, discuss,
observe and be observed. The flâneur, frequented these public places, observing
and commenting on the new modern society.
For the purpose of this project, I intend to focus on the characteristics of the
flâneur as evident in Paris in the early-to-mid nineteenth century—the ‘popular’
flâneur, championed by Balzac and others, prior to the February Revolution of
1848 (Gluck, 2003, p.54) and (Ferguson, 1997, pp.82–93); the definition of the
flâneur as the ‘painter of modern life’ in Baudelaire’s essay of the same title; and
Benjamin’s perception of the isolated, alienated flâneur as evidenced in his
‘Arcades Project’, and a number of his influential essays.
Although in the nineteenth century, there seems to have existed these three, very
different incarnations of the flâneur—certain common traits set him apart from
other ‘social types’ of the time—including the badaud and the dandy—with which
he should not be confused, even though, ‘…potentially any social type could be
mistaken for the flâneur, and the list of false Flâneurs was theoretically endless.’
(Gluck, 2003, pp.67-68)4.
Unlike the badaud, who can be described “…as gawker…[and] carried the
connotation of idle curiosity, gullibility, simpleminded foolishness and gaping
ignorance” (Shaya, 2004, p.49), or as a rubberneck who becomes one with the
crowd (Benjamin, 1999a, p.429), normally gathering to witness a spectacle or
crime; the flâneur’s gaze, the subject of his gaze, and his relation to the crowd
were different. Detached from the crowd, the flâneur had a more critical gaze—
often described as an urban semiotician (Trivundža, 2011, p.74) with the city as
his text—focusing on that which seemed mundane or superficial in modern life in
order to record and make sense of modernity. From his observation, the flâneur,
as artist-writer, very often produced texts which reflected on his understanding of
modern life—the physiologies and feuilletons produced in the 1840s (Gluck,
2003, p.61), or the essays, prose and poems written by Baudelaire, or the
UVC: Module 1 | Project Seven | leisure time and consumerism—flâneur [pg 2/9]
Constantin Guys sketches discussed by Baudelaire in ‘The Painter of Modern
Life’ essay. It was this subsequent production of knowledge and texts—which
need not be written texts—that Trivundza (Trivundža, 2011, pp.74-76) sees as an
essential element of the flâneur, setting him apart from the idle stroller.
While the popular flâneur of the 1840s was not the estranged, solitary figure on
the edge of the crowd; by the time of Baudelaire—the flâneur that Gluck (Gluck,
2003, p.54) refers to as the ‘avant-garde flâneur’, he had become such—“a
prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito” (Baudelaire, 1995, p.9)—this
flâneur could not be confused with the dandy. Baudelaire in his description of
Guys mentions that the dandy aspires to insensitivity and is blasé; and that Guy
has a horror of such people. Furthermore, the aim of a dandy is to be
extravagant, frivolous, aristocratic, “…known for his immaculate attention to dress
and a desire for self-display (and self-publicity, hence renowned individuals such
as Count Alfred D’Orsay, Prince de Sagan, and Beau Brummel)” (Leslie, 2002,
p.61). The contrast between the incognito flâneur and the self-publicity desired by
the showy dandy points to the fact that these two characters could not be one
and the same.
Baudelaire’s essay ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ (Baudelaire, 1995) is seen as a
pivotal work on the flâneur, the painter-artist and modernity. In the essay,
published in 1863, he references the illustrations of Constantine Guys as the
work of a true man of the world, distinguishing between Guys and the ‘traditional
artist’ in that the artist is deemed to be lacking in knowledge of the world, the
antithesis of Guys who is a travelled man of the world. He points to the fact that
Guys observes and understands, and then later creates his illustrations which
record modern life—which is what he wants painters to do.
Baudelaire’s choice of Guys as his protagonist has been questioned by some in
view of the fact that he was not an ‘artist; but rather an illustrator for the
Illustrated London News; but Prettejohn suggests that ‘…Baudelaire can show
that these throw-away drawings of fleeting episodes demonstrate both aspects of
beauty—the eternal as well as the transient—he can not only provide a
justification for the portrayal of modern life in art, he can potentially elucidate the
significance of the modern in aesthetic experience generally.’ (Prettejohn, 2005,
p.103). But Berman counters that it was ‘…not merely a lapse in taste but a
profound rejection and abasement of himself.’ (Berman, 1988) implying that
UVC: Module 1 | Project Seven | leisure time and consumerism—flâneur [pg 3/9]
Baudelaire himself had become dazzled by the spectacle that appeared on the
street.
Standing Soldiers—Constantin Guys [n.d]
In his essay, Baudelaire states that although it is acceptable for the artist to study
the masters as a means of learning how to paint, the subject of the painting
needs to be of the present day. This was not the first time that Baudelaire had
written about art and modernity, having made reference to it in his reviews of the
Paris Salon in 18455 and 18466, however it would seem that it was only with the
publication of ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ in 1863, that painters began to
respond to his call.
Although Benjamin’s writings on Baudelaire and the flâneur are credited with
recovering the figure of the flâneur as a character of modernity, his decision to
ignore the existence of the flâneur earlier in the nineteenth century; and his
dismissal of the physiologies—including the ‘Physiology du flâneur’ [1841]
(Ferguson, 1997, p.85)—so prevalent in the1840s, as insignificant (Benjamin,
2006, pp.66-71) has been criticised (Lauster, 2007, p.139). Additionally his
readings of Baudelaire’s essays and poems have been described as ‘inadequate’
(Singh, 2012, p.140) or ‘flawed’ (Lauster, 2007, p.139)7.
In his assessment of the flâneur, Benjamin working from a Marxist viewpoint,
points to the increasing disorientation of the flâneur as he is faced with change
and the challenge of modernity: the reconstruction of Paris under the direction of
Hausmann, the growth of commodification and the consumer society, the demise
UVC: Module 1 | Project Seven | leisure time and consumerism—flâneur [pg 4/9]
of the Paris Arcades—which according to Benjamin, were the haunt of the flâneur
—and the spectacle of the department stores. All of these apparently contributed
to an increasing phantasmagorical8 existence leading to confusion, and as the
flâneur succumbed to this commodification, his ultimate demise—“Just as his
final ambit is the department store, his last incarnation is the sandwich-man.“
(Benjamin, 1999b)
The role of the flâneur and the depiction of modernity in painting as posited by
Baudelaire was indeed taken up by artists—the work of Manet, and the art
movements that followed show a distinct change, both in subject matter and the
way in which the subject matter was depicted.
Music in the Tuileries—Manet [1862]
In the painting above in which Baudelaire is apparently depicted (O'Brien, n.d.),
Manet has chosen to paint a scene in a manner reminiscent of the sketches of
Guys, despite the fact that the materials are different. In this modern day scene,
there is a sense that it has been glimpsed in a moment. It is not that carefully
composed with the subject matter central to the frame, and there is a possibility
that it might even not be completely finished—with the possibly unfinished-grey
area in centre (Prettejohn, 2005, p.106). It has within it, a sense of urgency which
is similar to that contained in the Guys sketch.
UVC: Module 1 | Project Seven | leisure time and consumerism—flâneur [pg 5/9]
Manet, despite the continued classical references evident in his work—Dejeuner
sur l'herbe [1862-63] and Olympia [1863] as two examples where we see modern
figures in environments borrowed from classical themes—took up the challenge
of portraying modernity in his paintings. Golsan points specifically to three
paintings—Lola de Valence [1862]; Olympia [1863] and Un Bar aux Folies-
Bergere [1882] which she says puts the viewer of the images in the position of
flâneur or spectator—‘To encounter Mamet’s paintings is to perceive visually as
Baudelaire's flâneur ’ (Golan, 1996, p.179). She argues throughout the article that
there is a conversation between the writings of Baudelaire and the paintings of
Manet; and that it is in the Un Bar aux Folies-Bergere [1882] that the experience
of being in a crowd and surveying reaches its fullest expression.
UVC: Module 1 | Project Seven | leisure time and consumerism—flâneur [pg 6/9]
1 For the purpose of this project, I intend to focus on the characteristics of the flâneur as evident in
Paris in the nineteenth century. I am not extending the commentary to include modern re-interpretations of the practice of flânerie in current times.
2 I have opted not to include discussion of the constant political upheaval of this period—two foreign invasions [1814 and 1871]; occupation by foreign forces [1814]; two revolutions—the July Revolution [1830] and the February Revolution [1848]; and the short-lived Paris Commune
government which followed a popular uprising in Paris in March 1871.
3 An interesting aside is the apparent reason for the establishment of cafés and restaurants: “And,
since the revolution, many chefs having lost their aristocratic retainers, opened restaurants in Paris” (Leslie, 2002, p.62)
4 Referencing Physiologie du Flâneur, [Heart, 1841], Gluck discusses how the self-important
professional, the proletarian, the tourist, the family man and his wife and daughter, and the shopper were examples of the false flâneur—concrete examples against which the invisibility of the real flâneur could be measured. (Gluck, 2003, pp.67–68)
5 “There is no lack of subjects, nor of colours, to make epics. The painter, the true painter for
whom we are looking, will be he who can snatch its epic quality from the life of today and can make us see and understand, with brush or with pencil, how great and poetic we are in our cravats and our patent-leather boots. Next year let us hope that the true seekers may grant us the extraordinary delight of celebrating the advent of the new!” (O'Brien, n.d.)
6 “The pageant of fashionable life and the thousands of floating existences criminals and kept women – which drift about in the underworld of a great city; the Gazette des Tribunaux and the Moniteur all prove to us that we have only to open our eyes to recognize our heroism. […] The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.” (O'Brien, n.d.)
7
8 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phantasmagoric?qsrc=2446
Works Cited
Baudelaire, C. (1995) The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. New Edition. London: Phaidon Press.
Benjamin, W. (1999a) 'M [The Flâneur]', in The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-versity Press. pp. 416–455.
Benjamin, W. (1999b) The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, W. (2006) 'The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire', in Michael W Jennings (ed.) The Writer of Modern Life. Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard Univer-sity Press. pp. 45–133.
Berman, M. (1988) All That is Solid Melts into Air. Penguin.
Broker, P. (1999) The Wandering Flâneur, or Something Lost in Translation. Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies. 20115–130. [online]. Available from: http://www.miscelaneajournal.net/images/stories/articulos/vol20/Brooker20.pdf.
Ferguson, P. P. (1997) Paris As Revolution: Writing the Nineteenth Century City. Berkeley: Univer-sity of California Press.
Gluck, M. (2003) The Flâneur and the Aesthetic: Appropriation of Urban Culture in Mid-19th-Cen-tury Paris. Theory, Culture and Society. [Online] 20 (5), 53–80. [online]. Available from: http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/20/5/53.
Golsan, K. (1996) The Beholder as flâneur: Structures of Perception in Baudelaire and Manet. French Forum. 21 (2), 165–186. [online]. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40551933.
Luster, M. (2007) Walter Benjamin's Myth of the Flâneur. The Modern Language Review. 102 (1), 139–156. [online]. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20467157.
Leslie, E. (2002) 'Flâneurs in Paris and Berlin', in Rudy Kosher (ed.) Oxford: Berg. pp. 61–77.
O'Brien, E. (n.d.) To the Bourgeois and The Heroism of Modern Life, from the Salons of 1845 and 1846 [online]. Available from: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/o/obriene/art109/readings/10%20baudelaire%20hero%20%20bourgeois%204.htm (Accessed 23 June 2013).
Prettejohn, E. (2005) Beauty and Art 1750–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shaya, G. (2004) The Flâneur, the Badaud, and the Making of a Mass Public in France, circa 1860-1910. The American Historical Review. [Online] 109 (1), 41–77.
Singh, S. (2012) Baudelaire without Benjamin. Comparative Literature. 64 (4), 407–428. [online]. Available from: http://complit.dukejournals.org/content/64/4/407.abstract.
Tester, K. (1994) 'Introduction', in Keith Tester (ed.) The Flâneur. London: Routledge.
Trivundža, I. T. (2011) 'Dragons and Arcades: Towards a Discursive Construction of the Flâneur', in Ilija Tomanić Trivundža et al. (eds.) Critical Perspectives on the European Mediasphere. Ljubl-jana: Faculty of Social Sciences: Založba FDV. pp. 71–81.
Further random, but possibly irrelevant and/or incorrect, thoughts
As consequence of my readings, some thoughts have generated which are not specifically relevant
to the questions posed by this project—but I wish to record them here—in case they become
relevant sometime in the future.
Flânerie as an activity, as opposed to the concept of the flâneur—an idea mentioned by
Trivundža (Trivundža, 2011, p.80). This releases the concept from both the time and
gender constraints imposed by the original historical definition of the flâneur—allowing for
the continued existence of flânerie in modern day life—in different guises—some
mentioned below. [Although this approach to flânerie as no longer time or space based is
argued against by Peter Brooker in his article: ‘The Wandering Flâneur, or Something
Lost in Translation’ (Brooker, 1999)]
tourist
street photographer
teenagers in shopping malls
television and movie viewing
window shopping as an activity still performed today
Gendered gaze—don’t know too much about this at the moment—know it is upcoming
somewhere along this course; but the flâneur as male, seems to suggest this idea?
Interesting journal article which explains this concept of the ‘gendered gaze’ and which
needs to be remembered for later is: Wilson, E. (1992) The Invisible Flâneur. New Left
Review. 1/191. [Imported into Papers app.]
Possible problem with the notes regarding the period of the flâneur—suggests that the
flâneur developed at same time as development of the department store [maybe I am
misinterpreting notes?]—but from what I have read thus far, flâneur existed from early
1800s, department stores mid-to-late 1800s; and thinking that Benjamin saw department
stores, mass-production, consumerism and commodification as factors leading to the
death of the flâneur?
Whether or not the concept of female flâneur/ flâneuse use was possible in terms of the
way that Baudelaire saw the role of the flâneur and the structure of society at the time of
writing—the ‘decent’ woman was very much confined to the private space—the public
space was the realm of the male and the prostitute or courtesan—Wolff, Pollock. Coming
to terms with the concept that females at this time “had no status”—this came to them
from the status of the male who accompanied them—therefore there could be no female
flâneuse in the nineteenth century??