Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Photography and portraiture - An essay with 300 marks 1200 words is urgently needed, and no answer will be invalid within 1 day!
An essay with 300 marks 1200 words is urgently needed, and no answer will be invalid within 1 day!
On Baudelaire's Influence on Modern Art
If Diderot initiated modern artistic criticism and romanticism laid the aesthetic foundation (subjectivity) of modern artistic criticism, then Baudelaire laid the basic principles of modern artistic criticism. In other words, the full understanding of the principle of artistic self-sufficiency should wait until the birth of modernist artistic criticism and modernist aesthetics. As Moravski, a famous contemporary art critic and aesthetician, said, "The concepts of art and aesthetics were born and consolidated in the growth period of modernity. The birth of academy and painting outline, the specialization of criticism and the constant independence of artistic production from established court or church sponsorship-all these and other similar phenomena are intertwined, paving the way for the emergence of relatively independent aesthetic culture. However, the full consciousness of self-sufficient art and aesthetics only appeared with the emergence of distinct modernist sensibility. " 2
It can be clearly said that Baudelaire laid the basic principles of modernist art criticism because of his supreme position in modern art criticism and aesthetics. This principle is to truly put art in the relationship with truth and morality. This can refute the accusation that modernism is formalism once and for all, and formalism is equal to no content (truth content and moral tendency). Of course, people can quote many passages to prove Baudelaire's idea of artistic autonomy and his condemnation of moral preaching, philosophical poetry, political tendencies in art and literature. For example, Wellek thinks that Baudelaire only scornfully mentioned "the naive utopia of the school of art for art's sake, which excludes morality, often even passion, and is bound to be infertile". But later Baudelaire always declared against "preaching heresy" and picked up Allen? Poe's terminology also plays the role of "poetry has no purpose except itself" and "the more art is liberated from preaching, the more it can rise to purity and beauty unrelated to greed". three
Is Baudelaire as contradictory as Wellek said? No, Baudelaire's belief in artistic autonomy is not meaningless artistic autonomy. Behind the emphasis on artistic autonomy or "art for art's sake", Baudelaire has not forgotten his concern for modern art: that is, as an ever-open horizon, his appeal for modernity. He really understood the dialectical relationship between creative imagination, subject and object; An artistic language transformed by art is rooted in a set of theories about universal similarity, harmony and symbol. In this way, Wellek can't explain the contradiction that seems to be contained in Baudelaire's text. On the one hand, Wellek pointed out that with such a universal view of supernatural and creative imagination, Baudelaire would certainly emphasize the artist's ability to control the theme, form and style, even the role of convention, and the transformation of the theme into myth. On the other hand. He constantly emphasizes that because he regards nature as a colorful symbolic picture, he can't completely get rid of the realistic expectation, that is, the importance of theme and content, at least in painting. For example, he said, "The correct way to know whether a painting has a melody is to look at it from a distance, so that you can't understand its theme and can't tell its lines. If it has a melody, it already has meaning. " Because "melody" here means "unity of colors", it seems worthy to recommend something similar to abstract coloring thought-a painting without a theme, or at least an unknown or tangible theme. Elsewhere, Baudelaire once bluntly said that lines and colors "absolutely do not depend on the theme of painting". But Baudelaire also said: "The theme constitutes a part of an artist's genius", and it is not "worthwhile" to criticize a particular artist's theme. It is conceivable that Baudelaire didn't give up the theme criticism, otherwise he wouldn't say that an artist's theme is not worth it. In Wellek's view, this is a contradiction in Baudelaire's thought. But in my opinion, this is precisely the most wonderful place in Baudelaire's thought.
Because it once again confirms our view that Baudelaire is by no means a literal "art for art's sake" person. He advocates "art for art's sake" because he believes that only those who insist on "art for art's sake" can finally realize "art for life" most effectively. In other words, "art for art's sake" is only a means, and "art for life" is the purpose. The dialectics of form and theme can illustrate this point. Without care and theme (truth proposition and moral appeal), it is impossible to produce passion and form. Form is the product of various pressures faced by artists. Form is not the result of the logical development of the established language of art history, but comes from the contradiction between the pressure of social and historical themes and the established language of art history. Therefore, form (art form) must be understood as a dialectical movement between the theme content and the established language of art history. six
Baudelaire's view of art criticism is not only based on the romantic aesthetic heritage, but also criticizes this heritage and creates modernist art criticism. Baudelaire first emphasized the timeliness and historicity of aesthetics-obviously, this comes from romanticism. He opposed the concept of absolute and timeless beauty, recognized the aesthetic concept of romanticism, and believed that the standard of beauty changed with the passage of time, and the essence of beauty also changed with the change of history. He asserted that "romanticism is the latest and most immediate expression of beauty". In other words, beauty has different manifestations in different historical periods, and romanticism is the latest and most current manifestation of beauty. With the birth of romanticism, beauty has its present form.
In The Painter of Modern Life, Baudelaire put forward the argument between the famous ancient theorists and the modernists. This debate was given a new concept expression in Schiller's masterpiece On Simple Poetry and Sentimental Poetry, and then it appeared as an unchanging theme in the debate between schlegel and Romantic School. However, Baudelaire shifted his focus to the absolute beauty advocated by classicism and the relative beauty advocated by romanticism in a unique way. He said: "one component of beauty is eternal, and it is extremely difficult to determine how much it is." The other part is relative and temporary. It can be said that it is the times, fashion, morality and lust, or it is one of them, or it is inclusive. It's like an interesting and appetizing crust. Without it, the first ingredient will not be digested, appreciated, accepted and absorbed by human nature. eight
Therefore, the key to artistic creation is to grasp the relative and temporary moment, and dig out its eternal and unchangeable side from it, otherwise artistic beauty will come to nothing because there is nothing to support it, and the result can only be abstract and uncertain nothingness. "In short, in order to make any modernity worthy of classicality, we must extract the mysterious beauty that human life has inadvertently placed in it." For this reason, Baudelaire called on painters to be brave in observing and depicting modern life instead of sleeping on the ready-made models of the ancients. He said: "Anyone who studies anything other than pure art, logic and general methods in ancient works will be out of luck!" Because he was too deeply involved, he forgot the present and gave up the value and privilege provided by the times, because almost all our originality came from the imprint of time on our feelings. "Nine.
"The imprint of time on our feelings" can be said to be Baudelaire's best summary of the historical essence of beauty. Based on this, Baudelaire strongly advocated exploring the new beauty of modern society and extracting beauty from perishable, transitional and trivial ordinary phenomena. He praised the painter Guy as such an artist who excavated beauty from modern life. "He looks everywhere for the short and instantaneous beauty of current life, looking for the characteristics that readers allow us to call modernity." 10
It is against this background that Baudelaire used the word "modernity" in art criticism for the first time, and it may be used in all philosophical and aesthetic discussions. Baudelaire's concern about the terminology of establishing the characteristics of modern painting mode is often simplified as the experience of the modern urban space where the prodigal son returns. 1 1 However, Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life can also be read more widely, because it implies that the image of modernity can be constructed in painting through the term "modernity". This paper also establishes a conceptual premise, that is, there is such an inevitable connection between modernity and reproduction, and modern life becomes the result of visual construction, just as modernity is also the source of these paintings. Reproduction is not photographic description. Baudelaire chose the sculptor and illustrator Constance Gay as a model of modern artists. By describing Gay's works, it is because he wants to propose a model of modern life, which is related to the artistry and transformation as a reappearing role in space and theme. 12
Baudelaire built his modernity model around the themes of fashion and perishable. His discussion focused on some characters, but he did not directly observe these characters from the street, but inferred these characters and their descriptions from fashion illustrations and printed illustrations. Moreover, Baudelaire chose the characters-prodigal son, dude, daughter, soldier, etc. -They are all described in carefully constructed terms (they are constructed as "images"), so he analyzes their identities by expounding their self-replication strategies. 13 In other words, modern painting and modernity are a process of mutual construction. Modern painting is "the image of modernity", and modernity can be grasped through these images.
Baudelaire also expounded his judgment from the beginning, that is, fashion needs to distinguish between special and general, past and present, transition and eternity. By using these structurally opposite terms, Baudelaire insists that each of the two pairs of neutrals depends on the other pair for its identity. Therefore, any attempt to explain that a characteristic quality is inherently located in a special feature of modernity (such as eternity or perishable) is contrary to Baudelaire's intention. Baudelaire emphasized that perishable is the eternal condition of modernity. Therefore, those characteristics that solidified this perishable image have to play a role in the cognition of the lasting process of change, which Baudelaire put at the center of modern life. The main point is not only the information conveyed by visual images, but also the way to convey attention and the transitional and floating characteristics of participating in modernity. 14
In the eyes of today's audience, Guy's works are boring and lack of characteristics. His works are mainly due to their frankness and lack of details, especially the lack of that special information. Modern life cannot be described directly, but should be described from the images made as impressions and memories in the artist's mind. The theme, characters, scenes and fashion space of these images should be conveyed in shorthand, which is just the opposite of information-intensive description. Here, Baudelaire once again emphasized the construction of modernity by modern artists, rather than passive reflection. The combination of the collection mechanism (implying that life is already an image and modernity is a landscape) and the conceptual strategy of communication depends on the familiarity with the recorded floating images. These images are rough, so they only make sense in the continuous stream of other floating and equally perishable images.
In Modern Public and Photography (1859), Baudelaire despised and condemned the indiscriminate realism of photography. 15 He laughed at those contemporaries who thought that "if an industrial process [refers to photography] can give us a result equal to nature, it is absolute art". They said to themselves, "Because photography provides us with every guarantee of accuracy we want (they believe this, poor madman!" " ), then art is photography. " 16
Although these positions-emphasizing the particularity of vision and opposing photography-seem contradictory, they are actually complementary. The condemnation of photography needs a portrait of memory, an image product from the collection of experience rather than direct observation. Baudelaire's reproduction mode emphasizes meditation and subjectivity, not mechanical objectivity. The camera that automatically records the world is mechanical and neutral, and is considered as a documentary, but for Baudelaire, it can't reproduce modern images. On the contrary, his concept of modern landscape is very directly and importantly combined through social field and subjective filtering (as a constructive image of experience in memory). What Guy recalled in the studio, the meaningful thing he recalled from a lot of information he experienced in the street, is a sketch of a common experience that can be exchanged and recognized. This is the key to grasp the superficial emptiness of Guy's works.
Therefore, for Baudelaire, accurate images are not mechanical and detailed visual information. On the contrary, he emphasizes simplified, schematic and indexed symbols, which are sufficient in the field of sharing knowledge, but they are fleeting, short-lived and endless. At the end of this paper, we can clearly see that in Baudelaire's concept, the only universal characteristics of modernity are image activity, reproduction technology and artificial construction. 17
At this point, we come to the most valuable part of Baudelaire's aesthetic view of modernity, that is, to discuss the self-establishment and self-confirmation of modernity, as well as the theme of self-criticism and self-denial of modernity from the aesthetic point of view.
The self-foundation and self-confirmation of modernity have sprouted in Descartes' philosophy, gained a clear theme in Kant's philosophy and been further refined and deepened in Hegel's philosophy. In Baudelaire's view, modernity means some instantaneity and fluidity, but this instantaneity and fluidity contain eternity and invariance. Until today, Baudelaire's definition of modernity still has an unshakable classical position. It conceptualizes the concern for the present from romanticism into a principle, that is, only the modern can become a classic (or classical). In the "Modernity" section of the famous "The Painter of Modern Life", Baudelaire said: "He (referring to the painter Guy) is looking for what we can call modernity because there is no better word to express the concept we are talking about now. For him, the problem is to extract the poetic things that it may contain in history from popular things and extract eternity from the transition. " Then, he gave a famous definition of "modernity", perhaps the most famous one so far: "Modernity is transitional, transient and accidental, half is art, and the other half is eternal." 18
This is extremely important: Baudelaire's concept of modernity has become the basis of almost all definitions of modernity. Of course, the idea that the "new era" of modernity itself is a process that is open to the future, forming and waiting to be denied by the future, thus thinking that modernity is only a transition, in which only the instantaneous presence (the present) is the real idea, has been bred in Hegel's philosophy. In Hegel's concept of modernity, modernity, as a kind of openness of mobility and transition, is defined as that an epoch-making new beginning should start again forever at the moment when every new thing is born, that is, the new era is constantly regenerated in every current link. Habermas once translated this key term, which appeared in Hegel's philosophy, into the principle of self-foundation and self-confirmation of modernity: modernity can or does not need to borrow the standards of the past; It must create its own norms. 19 However, Baudelaire still attributed (or blamed) the concept of modernity to its aesthetic connotation from the beginning, which strongly influenced the general attitude of modernism and so-called postmodernism towards modernity. Because Baudelaire's description of modernity has too strong aesthetic connotation, people's criticism of modernity is more or less characterized by aesthetic criticism. Therefore, how to evaluate Baudelaire's aesthetic consciousness of modernity and his overall concept of modernity has become the core of the debate between Habermas and Foucault and other defenders of modernity. 20
This is not the right place to deal with this argument. However, a brief overview will help us understand the problem of modernity. Foucault believes that modernity has no normative content (that is, it can become a universal normative content), and modernity is purely a critical consciousness and attitude, because modernity has no essence and modernity is in constant self-denial. Obviously, Foucault inherited the negative side of Baudelaire's concept of modernity. That's what happened. Because Foucault's strategy here is to integrate Baudelaire's concept of modernity into Kant's definition of enlightenment. Habermas believes that modernity has its normative content, and the philosophical discourse of modernity is in the duality of self-establishment and self-confirmation, self-criticism and self-denial from the beginning. If Descartes and Kant created the self-foundation and self-confirmation of modernity, Rousseau and Hume created the self-criticism and self-denial of modernity. This duality of modernity has reached the highest level in Hegel's dialectical system. Therefore, in Habermas' view, modernity inherits Baudelaire's strong tendency of aesthetic criticism, which is not only inconsistent with the historical facts of modernity (for example, Habermas pointed out some positive values of modernity: the expansion of personal freedom and personal political participation space, legal equality and humanization of judicial system, substantial improvement of material life, education and health, etc. ). And it does not conform to the reality of European modernity, that is, the fact or prospect of European unity (Habermas regards European unity as the realization of Kant's ideal of permanent peace). Therefore, if modernity itself is a dynamic structure of foundation and solution, self-confirmation and self-doubt, self-legalization and self-criticism, then the final conclusion of postmodernists on modernity is quite suspicious. Postmodernists believe that modernity has completely lost its foundation and legitimacy, so they have to turn to the crazy power of Dionysus (Nietzsche), Socrates' poetic thinking (Heidegger), deconstruction game without any meta-position (Derrida), or rebellion without any stipulation (Foucault). I think all this is not based on the correct understanding of the self-criticism mechanism of modernity, so it does not help to really solve the problems of modernity. 22
Hans Robert Jauss also discussed Baudelaire's "modernity" consciousness and Benjamin's misunderstanding of Baudelaire in his long article "Contemporary Consciousness of Literary Tradition and Modernity". This analysis helps us to further grasp the complexity and importance of this issue. Hans Robert Jauss's thesis aims to capture the relationship between tradition and modernity by discussing the history of terms and concepts. Hans Robert Jauss traced the ever-changing meaning of the word "modern" and described the opposing concepts such as "ancient" and "classical" in order to find out how the new consciousness of an era left its previous tradition. In this conclusion, Hans Robert Jauss pointed out that Benjamin had profound ambiguity in dealing with a pair of opposing concepts: classical/modern (or ancient/modern). On the one hand, Benjamin followed Baudelaire's comments on Merion and thought that antiquity was the starting point of modernity. On the other hand, contrary to Baudelaire's original intention, Benjamin "regressed the functional relationship between modernity and classicism to a kind of content opposition."
Hans Robert Jauss believes that Benjamin misunderstood Baudelaire's theory of modernity, which is really a paradox; Because it is this critic's work that greatly promotes people's new understanding of this poet. Because of Benjamin, people no longer regard the Flower of Evil as the threshold for poetry to retreat into their own "art for art's sake"; Only through him can we realize that it is the product of historical experience, and it is the product of transforming the social process of19th century into the historical experience of art.
Benjamin's interpretation of Baudelaire is one-way: he only interprets the Flower of Evil as evidence of the urban people's experience of being far away from nature. Next, he ignored the dialectical "other side" of alienation, that is, the new productive energy released by conquering nature; In this respect, Baudelaire's urban lyric poetry and modernity theory are also of great significance. Benjamin seems to have neglected the cornerstone of Baudelaire's modern art theory: 1859 on Guy, the painter of modern life. Hans Robert Jauss pointed out that Baudelaire's insight into "the duality of beauty" not only questioned the concept of "the universality of beauty" as the essence of classical art and the standard of academic art, but also restored the correct position of the concept of "historical" that is, temporary beauty suppressed by classical art. In Baudelaire's theory, modern art can dismiss classical art as an authoritative past, because the temporary or transitional beauty implied in the concept of modernity brings its own classicality. In Baudelaire's view, the task of artists is to extract beauty from the temporary mystery of modern life, because only in this way can modernity become "classical".
If people no longer regard Baudelaire's "loss of nature and simplicity" as the result of the alienation of commodity production society in the second imperial era, then the contradiction Benjamin faced in explaining Baudelaire will be seen from another angle. In order to appreciate the dialectical significance of Baudelaire's criticism of nature, people should not deny that the symbol of productive energy-in his aesthetic theory and poetic practice-human's new enthusiasm for production-whether economic production or artistic production-has destroyed this enthusiasm, and he wants to overcome his natural state in order to create a road to the world he created himself. The dangerous, desolate and lonely side of Benjamin's metropolis is interrelated and mutually constructed in Baudelaire's Poetry Discovery. Benjamin's misreading is often a harbinger of later generations' general misreading: this misreading portrays Baudelaire as a poet who totally denies modernity, rather than a poet who dialectically criticizes modernity.
Baudelaire is always a key. Understanding the nature of Baudelaire's aesthetic criticism of modernity-whether it is a pure denial of modernity or a dialectical denial of modernity-determines people's understanding of the nature and principles of modernist art criticism. Through the tireless discussion of Baudelaire, we have reached the moment to draw the basic conclusion: Baudelaire is not a person who is purely "art for art's sake", but a person who is deeply concerned about "art for life" under the slogan of "art for art's sake"; Baudelaire is not a person who holds a pure aesthetic negation of modernity, but a person who holds a dialectical aesthetic negation of modernity; Baudelaire is not a person who thinks modernity is purely negative (that is, its transition, perishability and contingency), but a person who thinks modernity is positive and relevant (that is, its eternity, invariance and inevitability). Based on this, we can draw some principles of Baudelaire's modernist art: the principle of dialectical relationship between the truth content of modernist art and moral tendency and its form; The duality principle of the negativity of modernist art (modernism is a criticism and negation of modernity) and its constructiveness (modernism is an "image construction" of modernity); And the tension principle of modernist art's negative impulse to tradition ("new" and "modern") and its own pursuit of immortality ("presence" and "classics").
In this way, we can also draw the basic principles set by Baudelaire for modernist art criticism: the principle of political parties and the principle of formal restriction.
Since romanticism, after getting rid of the objective laws of neoclassicism, art criticism has actually become a bargaining in the opinion market. So, what are the principles of art criticism? Has it not degenerated into an arbitrary partisan struggle? Baudelaire's critical theory can be partially understood as a response to this dilemma. In this regard, Baudelaire put forward the principle of criticizing partisanship (but not arbitrary partisanship). He said: "The best criticism is the kind full of fun and poetry: it is not indifferent and mathematical criticism. Explain everything as an excuse, neither love nor hate, and sweep away your temperament at will. In order to be fair, in other words, to prove its reasonable existence, criticism should be focused, passionate and show political attitude, that is, from a single angle, not from an angle that shows extremely broad horizons. " 25
It can be seen that when it has become a problem to look at art from the objective law of neoclassicism or from the perspective of omniscient and omnipotent God, Baudelaire came out to demonstrate his party principle or limited perspective principle on art criticism. Baudelaire is clearly aware of the fact that there are different tastes and criticism can only be visual in nature. However, what makes Baudelaire uneasy is not the fact itself, nor the fact that there are different views on criticism, but whether criticism can guarantee its rationality after it inevitably becomes a party cause. Or, more accurately, is there a reasonable basis for criticism? Obviously, Baudelaire did not give a general theory on the rational basis of criticism, or what postmodernists call "meta-narrative". However, Baudelaire does believe that criticism has its "reasonable existence" ("to be fair ... to prove its reasonable existence ..."). There is no universal theory or meta-narrative about the rational basis of criticism. The contradiction of believing that criticism has "reasonable existence" seems to be reconciled by an explanation: in Baudelaire's view, although criticism no longer has objective laws once and for all, it is from an omniscient and omnipotent God. In other words, criticism no longer has a permanent rational basis, but it can have a temporary rational basis. That is to say, at a certain moment, people can still reach an understanding about which genre is better than another genre, or which artist of the same genre is better than another artist, and which work of the same artist is better than other works. Baudelaire's critical practice can prove this point. He praised Delacroix, Monet and Guy, because he thought they best represented the best qualities in artistic creation at a specific moment (for example, romantic spirit, concern for the present, modernity, etc.). In this way, Baudelaire proved that even without objective artistic laws, artistic criticism is still possible; This possibility is based on the temporary rationality of criticism. Criticism of this rationality should be focused and limited. It is impossible to criticize without emphasis and limitation, because without emphasis and limitation, as the postmodernists say, "everything is there", "everyone is an artist" and "no work of art will be out of the scope of art history", which is beyond reproach ... It just destroys the premise on which all art depends: art is the revelation of truth, the hint of moral tendency, and finally it is at a loss. In other words, if everything is available and everyone is an artist, there is no need for criticism.
This is why Baudelaire not only insists on the limitation and partisanship of criticism, but also advocates the limitation of form in artistic creation and the high seriousness of artistic games at a specific moment. Baudelaire particularly emphasized the importance of the rules of the game. This rule of the game is especially reflected in the limitation of art form. He said: "Because form plays a binding role, ideas are coming out more and more forcefully. ..... Have you noticed that the sky seen through the skylight, or between two chimneys, two rocks, or through the tiger window can produce more profound and endless ideas than the panoramic view from the top of the mountain? " Postmodernists often accuse modernism of formalism, as if modernism is a form for the sake of form. As we all know, from Baudelaire, modernism clearly realized the importance of the limitation of form to artistic game activities: because only through the bondage of form, "ideas will emerge more and more powerfully"! In fact, the understanding of the importance of form itself did not begin with modernism, but it was only in modernism that "the limitation of form" became the most prominent symbol. As a restriction, form constitutes a prerequisite for all arts; To cancel the form is to cancel the art itself. People talked about Toussaint (the representative of avant-garde art in history, as Berger said) and the notorious urinal more than once. It seems just to prove a self-evident truth: ugliness is a kind of glory because no adult is willing to take the world by storm and point out that the emperor's so-called new clothes are actually naked.
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