The Painter of Modern Life

Flâneur is a French word meaning saunterer and stroller, with a rather unfair suggestion of idleness. While the word has long been in existence, it was the French poet Baudelaire who transformed the word into a concept for modern urban experience. According to Baudelaire, the ideal flâneur is “a man of the world.” In an essay entitled “The Painter of Modern Life,” Baudelaire defines the flâneur as an essentially modern figure of the city:

The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement…To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world….He marvels at the eternal beauty and the amazing harmony of life in the capital cities….He gazes upon the landscapes of the great city – landscapes of stone, caressed by the mist or buffeted by the sun. He delights in fine carriages and proud horses, the dazzling smartness of the grooms, the expertness of the fottmen, the sinuous gait of the women, the beauty of the children, happy to be alive and nicely dress – in a word, he delights in universal life.

The flâneur has no fixed destination or objective to his travels; instead, he has only one purpose: experience. Like a sponge, he openly soaks up all he sees and hears and smells and touches. He eavesdrops on conversation; he looks up at buildings; he notices light and shadow; he makes up stories about the people around him. In the words of philosopher Alain de Bottom, “flâneurs are standing in deliberate opposition to capitalist society, with its two great imperatives, to be in a hurry, and to buy things…. it's the goal of flâneurs to recover a sense of community”

Because he is not in a hurry, he is not distracted by his own ego. Because he is not fixed on what’s coming next, the flâneur pays attention. While we live in an age where the technology has most certainly endangered the flâneur as a species (how often do you see people in the street not paying attention to anything but their smartphones?), we are also blessed with new ways of paying attention. Our phones allow us to capture and share a flower budding through snow, a baby’s first smile, a curious treasure on the street. The modern flâneur, as I see him, gazes at the landscapes of the great city – just as Baudelaire said. And then he snaps a quick shot of it with his phone or camera.

So our goal is to practice becoming modern flâneurs. Your blog post will be a record of a flâneur -like walk. You will have to pick a place where you can “set up house in the heart of the multitude” and record your experience, with as many appeals to the senses as possible.

How long should you walk or experience? I would say at least a half hour, at most two hours. As you walk, look out for fashions, faces, colors, buildings, natural intrusions [i.e. trees, parks, grasses, etc.], fragments of conversation, ambient noises, light, shadow, motion, and smells.

Here are some good places in Manhattan to be a flâneur:

-       Central Park

-       Times Square (though maybe too intense?)

-       Brooklyn Bridge

-       Tiny streets in the West Village

-       Broadway in the Upper West Side

-       Battery Park (on a nice day)

-       Chinatown

-       Lower East Side

-       The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Your blog entry will be a record of your experience, almost a film recording in words. In it, you will share with us what you saw, what you thought, what you heard, what you were remembered of, what you wondered, what you smelled, what you felt, and what you imagined. It should be a mélange of both image and text, for we are, as I mentioned, digital flâneurs.

For some general guidelines, you should write somewhere between 300 - 400 words (which is about one page) and have at least four photos and no more than eight. Your prose should adopt the breezy style of the flâneur in your writing. Be observant and aware but never settle too long on a particular thing. You should balance both the objective and subjective. As you relate to the reader your external stimuli, don’t forget to register the internal reaction as well. Keep “motion” throughout. The flâneur may pause but will rarely stop and nor should your prose. Use paragraphs to shift your focus, to change the scene, to introduce a new impression. Oh, and no selfies. 

So to summarize, here are the rules:

1)    Consider not having a particular destination in mind. Go with the wind. Be passive in your journey. Get lost.

2)    Don’t use your phone for anything other than taking photographs or jotting a note or recording a voice memo.

3)    Look up; so much to see in the buildings around you.

4)    Record your experiences in 300-400 words on the blog shortly after. You will remember more. Include 4-8 photos, interspersed throughout site, ideally next to relevant text.

5)    Your blog entry should be posted by 8:00 AM the day it is due.

6)    Your blog entry should have a title.

7)    Again, no selfies.