| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In this piece. I look at an essay that l have probably read too often not to find in it the key to all matters
aesthetic, historical. philosophical, and more. The essay is Charles Baudelaire°s Le Peintre de la vie modeme (The Painter of Modern Life), first published in 1863 and written, most probably, around 1859 to 1860. Baudelaire's exhilarating innovation is to down- play the signi?cance of eternal value in art. in favor of what he designates as its other half, the ?eeting presentness that is modernity. My essay is unapologetically an appreciation - for the most part - of a text that, in focusing on another artist, itself appears to be just that.' For Baudelaire develops his arguments through a mock-anonymous celebration of the artist Constantine Guys, referred to as M. G. (Monsieur G.). Guys's proli?c sketches, done at speed, for rapid journal publication, chart the smallest of day-by- day changes and typical scenes in contemporary life. Guys's pictures - the art of modernity - give to the day a second life. and "translate" into a different medium - from sight to (mental) impression to its "rebirth" as a sketch - that which would otherwise be lost with its passing.
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