Project 7 The Flanneur

Project 7 The Flanneur

 Definition  stroller -lounger-saunterer - loafer



Charles Baudelaire 1821-1867

French poet art critic (portrait painted of him by Courbet 1848)

Charles Baudelaire - his definition of flanneur was that of a person who walks the city in order to experience it - this does not limit the word to someone committing the act of a peripatetic stroll in the Baudelaire sense but can include a complete philosophical way of living and thinking.  After the French 1848 revolution the empire was re-established with bourgeois pretentious of 'order and morals' .  Baudelaire turned to art saying that traditional art was inadequate for the new modern life.  Social and economic changes brought on by the industrialisation demand that artist immerse themselves in the metropolis and in Baudelaire's phrase `a botanist of the sidewalk`  

Walter Benjamin 1938 wrote an essay on flanneur as part of an analysis of the Paris poet Charles Baudelaire  "The Painter of Modern Life" in which he showed a poetic and poets vision of public places and spaces of Paris coining the term "motility" Benjamin was himself associated with a left wing group of Marxist intellectuals (the Frankfurt School) in which he used Baudelaire's poet or the figure of a flanneur as a metaphorical device for understanding the cultural impact high capitalism had on Parisian's in the mid 19th century.  He turned his mind to the arcade or in his words' the original temple of commodity capitalism'.   the glass covered passageway filled with shops commodities, consumers and prostitutes provided the flanneur who in defiance of high capitalism would stroll and observe the intoxicated consumers.

The Works of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction 1935 acknowledges that change often occurs in ways that artists can neither predict or control.  19th century innovations in techniques or reproduction (photography and film) transformed the experience of art in such a way that Benjamin calls "the decay of aura" this meaning that a work that processes an aura (an effect of distance) must be unique and remain inaccessible to the audience.  He insists that aura has a ritual function that can makes itself useful in cults (fascism ' Fuhrer cult' ) as a modern ritual that changes art for reactionary means yet film and photo made it possible  to make endless copies of works of art therefore depriving it of its aura (if you see too many photos etc of a famous work of art it becomes the norm not original masterpiece ( i,e,at an art gallery).

For Baudelaire the role of the artist was to express modern life and human emotion which was to engage with the outside world  Schwarzback (1979-.1) suggested that 'modern life is city life' (the city is a playground of inspiration and a perfect setting for the artistic expressions of modern life

Schwarrzbak (1979.23) also suggested that Charles Dickens had an 'attaction of repusion' towards city life seen in his novels "places and people" in London are used in Oliver Twist to show a nightmare vision of a city of death (dark,evil, fear and suspense for both the characters and the reader.  Dickens walked the city (playing the role of the flaneur) which would act like a tonic and enable him to take up with new vigour the flagging interest of his stories and breathe new life in the them. 

Street Photography  The flanneur term tendency towards detached but attuned observation

One notable application of flanneur of street photography comes from Susan Sontag 1933-2004 American author literary theorist and political activist in a 1977 essay, In the book On Photography as well as her view of the history and present day role of photography in capitalist societies in the 70's  she describes how, since the development of hand held cameras in the early 20th century the camera has become a tool  for the flanneur.