Jennifer Pride

The Poetics of Black: Manet's Baudelairean "Masked Ball at the Opera" Jennifer Pride

Édouard Manet?s "Masked Ball at the Opera" (1873) shares formal and thematic relationships with Charles Baudelaire?s poetry and art criticism. Although previous studies reveal visual sources for Manet?s painting, here we reveal that Baudelaire?s poetry was the textual paradigm for Manet?s "Masked Ball." Women are studied alongside Baudelaire?s poems and his essay "The Painter of Modern Life." Also examined are the ways in which Haussmannization presented new problems and opportunities for the artist-as-flâneur. Baudelaire?s poem ?The Crowds? corresponds to Manet?s painting in that both use the mask as a means by which individuals assume a double-identity as they experience the spectacle of modernity. The painting and Baudelaire?s ?Danse Macabre? are analyzed as modernized versions of traditional danse macabre schema. Both works comprise oppositional pairs, such as life/death, that establish them as signifiers for the funeral of Parisian culture under Haussmannization. This book should be especially useful to the fields of art history, literature, feminist theory, visual and cultural studies, and anyone interested in the history and art of 19th-century Paris.