“I sincerely believe that the best criticism is the criticism that is entertaining and poetic; not a cold analytic type of criticism, which, claiming to explain everything, is devoid of hatred and love, and deliberately rids itself of any trace of feeling, but, since a fine painting is nature reflected by an artist, the best critical study, I repeat, will be the one that is that painting reflected by an intelligent and sensitive mind.”
-Charles Baudelaire, from his essay What is the Good of Criticism?

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), author of the famous and infamous Les Fleures du mal published in 1857 when the poet reached the age of thirty-six, was better known as a literary and art critic when in his twenties. And let me tell you folks, as the essays in this volume forcefully demonstrate, young Charles Baudelaire was a critic on fire, a passionate supporter and defended of the dignity and beauty of art against materialism and the crass positivist philosophy of his day, a critic who employed sumptuous, colorful language to articulate his views, opinions, judgements and ideas on many topics of literature and the arts, ranging from the paintings of Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot to Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe. Below are a number of direct Baudelaire quotes from this Penguin edition along with my own comments.


Baudelaire on Delacroix’s Dernières paroles de l’empereur Marc Aurèle: “In conclusion, let us add, for no one mentions it, this picture is perfection in drawing and modelling. Does the layman really appreciate the difficulty of getting the effect of shape and depth with paint? The difficulty is twofold. Modelling with one tone is the equivalent of using a drawing stump, the problem is simple: to achieve the same effect with colour means that the artist, in the midst of his rapid, spontaneous and complex brushwork, must first understand the logical interrelation of the shadows and light and then find the corresponding tone and its harmonious range; in other words, if the shadow is green and the source of light red, the artist must at once find a harmony of green and red, the former dark and the latter luminous, with which to render the effect in the round of a monochrome object.” ---------- These words from the great French author capture a copious number of painterly elements: the depiction of male subjects in their diverse postures and in all their depth and profundity surrounding the gravity of the event; the hues, shades and tints of the various colors harmonizing in darkness and light. Can there be any doubt this Delacroix painting opened critic Baudelaire’s mind and heart in ways that lifted his spirit to the full flower of beauty?


Baudelaire on Horace Vernet's Prise de la smalah d'Abd-el-Kader: "This African scene is colder than a fine winter's day. Everything in it has a disastrous whiteness and clarity about it. Unity, nil; instead, a host of interesting little anecdotes; the whole vast panorama is fit for the walls of a tavern. Mr. Horace Vernet himself, that odious representative of chic, has the merit of not being a doubter. He is a man of a happy and frolicsome disposition; he inhabits an artificial country, where the actors and the scenery are all made of cardboard, but he reigns supreme in his kingdom of parade and entertainment." ---------- The young critic pulls no punches and claims to be blunt and go straight to the point when assessing this artist who has degraded himself by “wallowing in the horrible,” an artist who (and here I offer my language to underscore the critic's disdain) assumes the mantle of art yet is nothing more than a brush-wielding poopstick, a semi-talented dabbler who uses his meager talents to champion war and jingoism. Such nonsense sickened Baudelaire and it certainly sickens me. This to say, even today, serious critics both in literature and in art do well to maintain high standards.

"There are certain awe-inspiring words that constantly recur in literary polemics: Art, the beautiful, the useful, morality. A grand scrimmage is in progress, in which, owing to lack of philosophical wisdom, each contestant grabs half the flag and says the other half is valueless." ---------- Our young critic goes on to say how there is a term when morality is featured as a central component in judging a work of art – propaganda. I’m in complete agreement with Baudelaire on this point: such a critic writes on art but what they really value is indoctrination into the party line and the half-truths of the status quo; they view painting, films and novels as nothing but tools to trump their own political or religious leanings; they continue to write on this or that but they have forfeited all claims to be taken seriously.

"Fabulous creations, beings for whose existence no explanation drawn from ordinary common sense is possible, often excite in us a wild hilarity, excessive fits and swoonings of laughter. Evidently a distinction is called for here, as we are confronted with a higher form. From the artistic point of view, the comic is an imitation, the grotesque, a creation." ---------- Obviously what Baudelaire values is creation, as in the grotesques featured in the paintings of (my examples here) Hieronymus Bosch or Francisco Goya. I myself must give more reflection to the distinction being made between the comic and the grotesque, but I sense there is keen insight here. I’d be happy if anybody reading this would care to share any reflections on the subject.

"A biographer - well-intended, worthy fellow - tells us in the gravest tones that, if Poe had only made an effort to bring order into his genius and to apply his creative faculties in a manner more appropriate to American soil, he might have become a moneyed author, 'A money-making author'." ---------- There was no bigger supporter of Poe in Europe than Baudelaire, who translated the American writer’s tales and poetry into French for the first time. Baudelaire devotes many pages to Poe’s life and work, emphasizing the unending battle waged by the literary genius with his refined tastes, highly developed artistic awareness and insatiable love of beauty against coarse, money-driven American society, a country and land that for such a sensitive and poetic soul was nothing less than a prison of perpetual torture.

"As the photographic industry became the refuge of all failed painters with too little talent, or too lazy to complete their studies, this universal craze not only assumed the air of blind and imbecile infatuation, but took on the aspect of revenge." ------ Baudelaire’s piece on photography from this collection foreshadows Walter Benjamin’s famous essay on the effects of mechanization and modern technology on the traditional expressions within the visual arts – all painting in general and specifically portrait painting. Ironically, we have so many great photos of Charles Baudelaire. Thank goodness!

"For sketches of manners, for the portrayal of bourgeois life and the fashion scene, the quickest and the cheapest technical means will evidently be the best. The more beauty the artist puts into it, the more valuable will the work be; but there is in the trivial things of life, in the daily changing of external things, a speed of movement that imposes upon the artist an equal speed of execution." ---------- Ha! If you are after a "team picture," no need to fuss, just grab your camera (or iphone) and take your shot.

"From that moment Madame Bovary - a wager, a real wager, a bet, like all works of art - was born. To accomplish this feat in full, nothing remained for the author to do but to divest himself (as far as possible) of his sex and to be a woman. The result is a miracle; for in spite of all his actor's zeal, he could not avoid injecting virile blood into the veins of his character, or prevent Madame Bovary herself from being a man, in the most vigorous, ambitious and also the most imaginative side of her nature." ---------- Please let this quote whet your literary appetite to read the entire twelve-page essay. It's a humdinger.


The young French critic much admired the mastery of Corot. ( )

Reprinted as Selected Writings on Art and Literature