Directed Entry: Portraying the Nuances of Modern Life

Baudelaire speaks of a "daring nobility if the painter of modern life were imaginative enough to seize it, even in the mire..." .
Discuss how any part of the Baudelaire piece relates to your own world OR what is the "real, genuine" thing that today's painter of modern life needs to discover.

I'm not sure where to start for this entry. I enjoyed the Baudelaire piece as a written work, but I'm not sure I quite understood the second part of the reading. I think Baudelaire is trying to convey to the reader how even though things may look alike on the surface, a deeper more through examination is needed in order to see the true nature of an object or situation. He uses as an example the various types of women to be found in Paris in his time--from "young women of the most fashionable society" to "the poor slaves of those filthy stews"--and points out that even though on the surface they share the common facade of well-to-do proper ladies, a deeper look is needed in order to discern the actual from the counterfeit. Baudelaire believes that artists need to be especially diligent when observing the world around them, for there's no way they'd be able to convey the actuality of complicated, multi-layered subjects without comprehending the nuances themselves. I think the entire second part of the reading was just a giant, prettily worded case study to support his opinion.

So now that I've sort of worked that out for myself, how do Baudelaire's words relate to my world? I like to think of myself as a fairly observant person, but as of late, I've come to realize that I'm pretty oblivious to a lot of things. I do a lot of running around inside my own head, which causes me to miss some of the little things that are happening around me. Nuance is an important tool for an artist to have mastery of, whether observed or depicted. It makes one more sensitive to the people and environment around them, and makes their work more multifaceted and genuine to their audience. This is because life is steeped in nuance, in the little things our subconscious picks up on which makes each person's life experience different from anyone else's. Without this added layer of inflection and meaning, any resulting work falls flat of reality and is little more than a two dimensional representation of a subject.

We're so separated from each other in this Information Age; paradoxically, even though technology has made the world smaller, it has also crippled genuine human interaction. To take something mentioned in lecture, commuters on public transportation are a prime example of this. Those who ride regularly most often carry some form of distraction, whether it be a newspaper, iPod, or cell phone. Even those looking out the window are shut off from sensation, as like the "half-wit peacock" and his mistress, their gazes are unseeing, blank stares (I know I'm guilty of this one). No one really looks at the people around them. It's as if there's some unspoken rule that each person must exist separately, making no contact with their fellow riders unless absolutely necessary. Technology makes it easier to slip inside yourself, away from the outside world and the enjoyment of simple observation.

I think the paradox of technology creating a new type of global community while simultaneously perpetrating human isolation is the "real, genuine" thing that today's painter of modern life needs to portray. Technology evolves so fast, causing the world gets smaller everyday; but we continue to insist on existing separately from one another, doing things as small as shutting out our companions on a train ride to work or as large as functioning so deeply inside of ourselves that we fail to notice the details of those living around us. Hopefully modern artists are more observant than the masses and see this retreat from traditional human interaction--and in seeing are portraying these events in their artwork.