Lightfoot's Hackney Project

Regarding Baudelaire’s ‘The Painter of Modern Life’

I was discussing this project with a friend recently and he asked me if I had ever read Charles Baudelaire’s essay ‘The Painter of Modern Life’. Though Baudelaire’s book of poems ‘Les Fleurs de Mal’ (‘The Flowers of Evil’) had had a profound effect on me as a teenager (and on my partly symbolist inspired painting that was beginning to evolve at that time), and though I had long known that he was highly regarded as an important 19^th century writer on art, I realised that I had never got around to reading much more of his work than his poems.

My friend was quite insistent that I should read the essay and so he kindly sent me a copy and now I am very glad that he did. ‘The Painter of  Modern Life’ was indeed an inspiration to me and a spur to some of my deepest intentions with this project.

On the third page of the essay, this part struck me deeply and stayed with me:

‘Beauty is made up of an eternal, invariable element, whose quantity it is excessively difficult to determine, and of a relative, circumstantial element, which will be, if you like, whether severally or all at once, the age, it’s fashions, it’s morals, it’s emotions. Without this second element, which might be described as the amusing, enticing, appetising icing on the divine cake, the first element, would be beyond our powers of digestion or appreciation, neither adapted nor suitable to human nature. I defy anyone to point to a single scrap of beauty which does not contain these two elements.’

How wonderfully different an approach to apprehending art than is fashionable today Baudelaire has and yet how wonderously true his words chime, as to what is still so important in much good painting, in my experience at least.

I would like to read over the essay again and quote more from it for this post; perhaps even take the time to craft into the right words some of the delicate yet stirring thoughts and emotions that it provokes in me. But then I stop myself. Is Saturday afternoon to be spent writing, or painting?

My housemate is out and so the flat is quiet. The light today is especially good and a specially primed canvas rests on my easel. I have carefully collected and prepared the necessary reference material and have my rough design for the picture established. Although I am tempted to simply pick up a brush and  begin painting, I have decided in the case of this new picture to make a more precise preliminary drawing than I have been making of late, which will then be transferred methodically to the canvas. But this should only take an hour or two, maybe three. If I make a start now then there may even be daylight enough left at the end of the afternoon and into the early evening for me to mix a few colours and make a start on the best part, of both the making of pictures and indeed of living itself; painting.