Baudelaire and the autonomy of the art field

Abstract

The themes of art’s autonomy and unity between art and life were hotly debated throughout the twentieth century. This autonomy was so important that modernity itself can not be understood without it: modern art is self sufficient, self regulating and, above all, it’s not classical, it’s not ordinary... Among the scholars that studied modern art, we will work specifically with Pierre Bourdieu, for we understand that his art field concept can address the above themes avoiding to take them as unquestionable postulates and also by making explicit the relations between art sphere and other areas of social life in a dynamic and critical manner. The main material of analysis will be an essay by Charles Baudelaire, entitled The Painter of Modern Life, from which, through notes about a costume painter, we can extract important themes for comprehending artistic modernity and it’s claim for autonomy.