Text and Image - PhD seminar with Barbara Bohac and François Bon

Barbara Bohac (Université de Lille):
Charles Baudelaire and the painter of modern life : why was it Constantin Guys and not Edouard Manet ?

Baudelaire dedicated his definitive essay regarding the « Painter of Modern Life » to the minor draughtsman, Constantin Guys. In stark contrast, despite his friendship with Manet, he never wrote anything substantial about his painting. Did this poet, whose own work foreshadowed modern poetry, overlook Manet’s innovative genius? Did he not fully appreciate his art?

Setting out this debate will help us acquire a better understanding of the new concept of “Modernity” that Baudelaire puts forward in his essay. It will also draw our attention to the pitfalls that await the researcher or the general reader who is interested in everyday life as an aesthetic field and wishes to speculate upon the relationship between different art forms.

Francois Bon (novelist / essayist):
Writing as a part of the image’s story

Vilèm Flusser was the first one to suggest, if the image’s story permanently implies the use of a « tekné », even the simplest one, that writing, as a particular tool of representation, is a part of this story. Fictional hypothesis or not, it allows us to enlighten deeply the nature and the actual  changes of the narrative art in the digital times, when virality and sharing are constitutive of the editing and publishing process. When the nature itself of the narrative object doesn’t separate text and image, and when the picture itself isn’t any more the spectacle of a switched-off time.