blog.arthistoricum.net

Honoré Daumier, Cultural Trauma, and Critical Laughter

Art Historians consider the destruction and reconstruction of Paris by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann and Napoleon III during the mid-19th century as the rupture that thrust visual culture into the modern era and enabled a discourse on modernity. What has been overlooked is the more immediate satirical discourse of Haussmannization as trauma that developed in visual culture from 1853 to 1870. My theory is that comedic satirical caricature mediated the trauma of Haussmannization by commenting on and undermining the socio-political changes that occurred as a result of this rupture. As used here, cultural trauma involves a lived event that shatters and fragments social cohesion. Cultural trauma demands distance, mediation, and representation. The satirical caricatures in the popular press news journal, Le Charivari, functioned to mitigate the visceral experience of trauma through satire. At the same time, these satirical images were a visual representation of real trauma generated by urban renewal. In Le Charivari, caricatures combine image and text in a comedic way to reveal social anxieties regarding the loss of old Paris, the irony of new problems such as traffic congestion and accidents in the evolving city, and the character and conduct of Haussmann, himself.

Satirical caricatures by Honoré Daumier provide social critique during this time of urban upheaval that ultimately undermines power relations (Haussmann is dismissed amid controversy in 1870). Such satirical images are a paradox of modernity itself in that they comprise irresolvable binaries regarding the positive/negative impact of Haussmannization. These humorous and anecdotal caricatures helped 19th century Parisians to laugh at the foibles of modern life by replacing everyday annoyances and problems with comical scenes. Thus, Daumier’s satirical caricatures in Le Charivari document the confusion and anxiety inherent in the ongoing erasure and remarking of the city’s physiognomy and, consequently, social and cultural traditions. Rather than producing overtly critical images, however, Daumier’s satirical caricatures represent the reality of Haussmannization in coded terms. The artist poked fun at modern life with images of Parisians dancing on the newly paved macadam boulevards, navigating the new phenomenon of the crowds, and self-reflecting on their roles in the modern metropolis.

While Daumier was creating caricatures for Le Charivari, Charles Baudelaire wrote three essays on caricature and the essence of laughter in which he connects the comic to the dual prongs of modernity (in this case, the eternal quest for modernization and the transitory shocks of urbanization). It is in these essays, along with the Painter of Modern life, that Baudelaire establishes the importance of caricature as an aesthetic model that can deploy irony as a tool for social critique. The comic, for Baudelaire, becomes a metaphor for urban experience in Haussmann’s Paris. My working thesis examines the ways in which Daumier’s caricatures embody Baudelaire’s theory of comedic form. Daumier’s Haussmannization caricatures embody and reveal the fragmentation of modern life during the Second Empire. Using Daumier’s caricature and Baudelaire’s art criticism, I reveal how satirical caricatures provide a visual record of the ironic distance needed by a culture experiencing the continual shocks of urban transformation.

0 Kommentar(e)

Kommentar

Kontakt

Kommentar

Absenden