Monday 12 September 2011

Visual Culture - the flaneur

The text of the Course material seems strangely at odds with the material I have been able to find.  Not least the statement  "The increase in leisure and disposable income comes alongside the development of the department store and shopping as an activity". Whilst there must be a question mark over whether the increase in disposable income was evenly spread across the classes and consequent leisure time the development of the department store was seen by Walter Benjamin as bringing about the end of flanerie. He held the belief that the flaneur was specific to the arcades of 19th Century Paris with the covered streets and the crowds that they attracted providing the best environment for the appearance of the flaneur. Whilst the department store is a natural progression from the arcade the environment is not conducive to the needs of the flaneur. The arcades offer an area that is both public (the area external to the shops) and private (the shops themselves). In the department store there is no such division.

Despite this view of Benjamin's the term remains in use as a shorthand description (with all the difficulties of such use) of the the man (less frequently a woman) who whilst strolling through the urban environment is consciously aware of the changes that can be experienced from street to street and from building to building. The modern equivalent is the street photographer who wanders, apparently aimlessly, camera at the ready to capture anything that attracts and holds his attention, however fleeting the event. One well known photographer, Jay Eiszel, has spent most of his career strolling the streets of New York with his camera taking images often of the same area but where he sees the interaction of the passing people with the buildings that is unique in some way that may only be the effect of a momentary change in light or reflection in a glass fronted building.

The wider audience for art brought about by the increase in disposable income across a broader range of classes offers the artist the opportunity to at least be able to support himself. Presumably this allowed him greater time to 'think'. Benjamin quotes from the Larousse Dictionary of 1872  "the greater part of men of genius were great flaneurs... Often it is at the time when the artist or the poet seems the least occupied in their work, that they are plunged the deepest." It has always been part of the artists 'facade' that he is not being idle or wasting his time but engaged in deep consideration of his next great piece of art. If there is any truth in this then being seen and acting as a flaneur can only add to the quality and quantity of his output.  It is a separate argument whether this possible increase would benefit the wider society.

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