At a used bookstore over the weekend, I found a book by Baudelaire talking about Delacroix's artistic evaluation of painting, which was very interesting to read.
First of all, both men were wonderful men, and Baudelaire was called "the demon poet, sensitive, fierce, eccentric, and full of whimsy." He was fascinated by the work of writers of the late Roman period and was fascinated by their decadent mood. He also liked the works of Balzac, Shelley, Byron, Hugo, Gautier, and Edgar Allan Poe, and was conquered by Romanticism.
However, Baudelaire chased and laughed, indulged in sex, wild and unruly, and had many terrible legends. For example, scalding the nose of a lion with a cigar, smashing pedestrians from the upper floor with a flower pot, torturing small animals, and so on. Baudelaire not only did not defend these legends, but even promoted themselves, made his own rumors, and tasted the pleasure of revenge. How would such a sensitive poet, who abhors the world around him, evaluate the equally unique art of Delacroix?
Delacroix was also a fanatical rebel, Ingres' greatest enemy in art, and he could not tolerate overemphasizing correct sketching and continuing to imitate classical sculpture. Delacroix openly declared himself a defender of the liberal Bonamarian bourgeoisie and firmly opposed the ideas revived after 1815 in support of the restoration of the old system.
Two unconventional people are destined to meet the spark of love, and Baudelaire admires Delacroix so much that he is too biased in his evaluation of Ingres, and secretly elevates Delacroix.
The book focuses on the selection of articles related to Delacroix in Baudelaire's artistic evaluation, and the articles are not organized in chronological order, but are arranged according to the development of Baudelaire's aesthetic ideas. The main ideas include:
1. The creative concept of individualism, especially emphasizing the imagination of the painter and the spirit of reflecting nature with the spirit of the individual;
2. Anti-traditional and anti-rational, attacking academics, attacking critics, and attacking the "correct" way of creating too much on details and ignoring the overall way of creation (such as Ingres);
3) To a certain extent, baudelaire strives to reconstruct what is the mainstream elite culture of the contemporary era, and although Baudelaire opposes the academic tradition, he also says that he only focuses on the silhouette like "peasants and mangy men", and has no popular cultural perspective.
4, I feel that this article can have something to say if the standard Benjamin's theory of mechanical reproduction, on the one hand, the audience can watch instantaneously, and at the same time can feel the creative process of the creator behind it; on the other hand, the process from the work to the creator's mind is also like the "aura" he said, and the romantic works praised by Baudelaire are full of charm.
Writing about a person with all the passion and love, digesting his life and then telling it, is still worth seeing.