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


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


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.


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.


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.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phantasmagoric?qsrc=2446

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??

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leisure time and consumerism—flâneur