The reconstruction of Paris under Baron Haussmann in the latter part of the nineteenth century opened up the once narrow and secluded streets and passageways of medieval. The process of Haussmannization (1852-1870) transformed the city by creating large public squares and boulevards where Parisians could stroll among the crowds which the open spaces encouraged. At the same time, the destabilization of daily life in Paris under Haussmann‘s destruction and reconstruction of the city and the consequential reordering of the quotidian presented new problems for city dwellers such as alienation of the individual in the crowd and the displacement of the less-fortunate working class.The destructive reordering of Paris during the middle part of the century, presented new problems and opportunities for the artist-as-flâneur.

Although viewed by art historians as the consummate moment of Parisian modernity, literary historians argue that modernity was already being signified by writers earlier in the century.  This series of essays explores the disjunction between conventional and current scholarship concerning the role of Haussmannization and its effects on art production in nineteenth-century Paris. Because of the discrepancy between the history of literature and of visual art, a specialized study is warranted to flesh out the arguments and their validity.  Why do art historians see Haussmann’s renovation of Paris as the onset of modernity and therefore a break from the restrictions of the Academy whereas literary historians view it as a continuation of urban realism that was codified by Balzac and began decades before Haussmann.  It is within the discursive space between the literary and visual arts that I intend to explore in this series of articles.

Haussmannization is considered by art historians such as T. J. Clark to be the decisive breaking point, or rupture, that not only transformed, but visual art as well.[i] During the 1860’s, artists such as Manet took on the city’s shifting scenery as subject matter.As well, artists began to employ new techniques that mirror the flux of modernity. The loose, painterly brushwork in Manet’s Music in the Tuileries is just such a technique in that it is not bound by the defined contours that viewers were accustomed to seeing in academic painting.In like manner, Charles Baudelaire’s poetry and art criticism, particularly The Crowds, serves as a textual paradigm for the representation of modernity by both artists and writers who aim to externalize the internal sensations of phantasmagoria triggered by Haussmannization.

Recent scholarship, however, suggests that the face of the city was already being transformed as early as the turn of century.In his book Planning Paris before Haussmann, Nicholas Payananis challenges earlier scholarship that considers Haussmannization as the singular rupture that thrusts Paris. [ii] As well, Walter Benjamin links the arcades that were built along the old narrow streets during the first half of the century, providing the public with a safely roofed outdoor area for buying and selling as well as mingling and observing, with the development of the flâneur that later finds himself roaming along the newly built wide sidewalks and public squares of Haussmann’s Paris. The early modern form of crowd activity took place in the glass and iron construction of the arcades, a product of industrialization.The metamorphosing concept of the flâneur, as well as a sense of urban alienation can be found in literary works that pre-date Haussmannization, such as Balzac’s short story Ferragus in The History of the Thirteen.  Contemporaneous pictorial counterparts to early literary representations of modernity can be seen in Daumier’s caricatures.Numerous lithographs indicate a sense of social alienation and uncomfortable street corner meetings such as those found in Ferragus.