Drawing of my bike made on my iPhone. 2020.
One of my favorite ways to get around my city is via bicyclette.
My second favorite way to get around any city is to walk.
Another way I take in my surroundings is to sit and sketch for awhile. Sketching is a great way to take in your surroundings. Sketching focuses your attention. After purposefully increasing my sketching in the past few years—landscapes, cityscapes, still life, my cats….I have found that sketching helps me to relax and slip into the sublime world of happenstance observations.
With this in mind, I turn to the concept of the "flâneur," a term I learned when studying the work of the French Impressionists.
flâner (french): to stroll (english.)
A french verb meaning to stroll, to wander, to saunter, to basically ease through a crowd of people. The word can be stretched to mean loitering. At its essence, a flâneur is a detached observer of modern life.
The concept of the flâneur was coined in the late 19th century and originated as a work of fiction from the mind of 19th century poet and writer, Charles Baudelaire, who introduced the concept in his 1863 essay, "The Painter of Modern Life" (Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne.)
Édouard Manet by Henri Fantin-Latour. Oil on Canvas. 1867.
Eduoard Manet was one of those French Impressionist painters who was considered a flâneur. Manet, a dapper figure, gives the flaneur an identity. Manet would stroll through the city, capturing poses, sketching them quickly in a notebook, and completing the composition in his studio. Manet is one of the first painters of modern life and a precursor to the Impressionist painters around him.
The flâneur, the wanderer of the city, the observer and chronicler of the present, an anonymous figure in the crowd, was invented by the creative poetic mind of Baudelaire. "The crowd is his domain, just as the air is the bird’s, and water that of the fish. His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd. For the perfect idler, for the passionate ob-server it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very centre of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions."
A "stroller of city streets," Baudelaire places the figure of the flâneur as playing a key role in portraying the modern city through the arts.
“Now Playing.” Drawing. 2018.
The flâneur evolved figuratively in literature and literally as the French Impressionists were coming on the scene chronicling modern life. The time was the mid 19th century. The city of Paris, then an ancient, rambling array of byzantine alleys and rickety wood structures and unsanitary waterways was being demolished by order of Napoleon III. His architect in charge of this overhaul was Georges-Eugène Haussmann, commonly known as Baron Haussmann. From 1853-1870, Baron Haussmann demolished old Paris, replacing the city with swaths of grand boulevards, parks and public works such as the Palais Garnier home of the Opéra National de Paris, Les Halles, a huge central marketplace in the heart of Paris that has since undergone a significant reconstruction and the network of a dozen avenues radiating from the Arc de Triomphe at the core of Haussmann’s Place de l’Ètoile. The Eiffel Tower designed by Gustave Eiffel in the post Hausmann years would be completed during the renovation of Paris for the World's Fair in Paris, France of the same year.
At the same time as the city is being transformed, along comes a new movement in art---French Impressionism--beginning in about 1860. The Impressionists were considered vulgar and strange because they broke with the academic and rigid manner characterized by meticulous, smooth finishes. The Impressionists preferred instead to capture life in the moment, through quick sketches and fast dashes of the paintbrush in bold color combinations.
Édouard Manet, “Le journal illustre” (Woman Reading.) Oil on canvas. 20x24.” 1879.
Forced to resign in 1870 for excessive expenditure, Baron Hausmann's work was continued by others into the first two decades of the 20th century, completed in 1927. The world of French Impressionism overcame its initial stigma and flourished from approximately 1870-1880 winding down into the second decade of the 20th century following the deaths of the movement's last remaining founders--Pierre August Renoir (1841-1919) and Claude Monet (1840-1926.) The concept of being an observer of modern life at the time of Paris in the mid 19th century runs parallel to the evolution of the city of Paris we know today as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, as does a significant movement of art defined by its "modernity," that of French Impressionism.
The flâneur may be a concept from another era and another century but it has direct relevance to being in the "now."
Fast forward to the 21st century. In the 21st century, it is fair to say that a flâneur is not restricted to the male sex. Even though the equivalent term for women in the French language is "flâneusse," in our modern era, flâneur is non-binary, as is the term "actor."
A modern day flâneur that comes to mind is that of the street photographer. The street photographer wanders the street looking for stories that can be told in the fleeting moments caught in the lens of their camera. One of my very favorite street photographers is Saul Leiter who first trained as a painter. The works of Saul Leiter inspire me as a painter with regards to composition and also use of saturated color, notably the color red as one of his hallmarks.
More close to home, I am inspired by the cinematic esthetics of Jill Corral:
"I’m interested in stories and how they’re told. With light and sound. Darkness and silence. 0 and 1. Whitespace and form. Movement and stillness."
and also the lush documentary works of Valerie Franc:
“she explores the complexities of human emotions and the frailty of life in a very personal way.”
More of Valerie’s work can be found here.
These gifted photographers are friends of mine who are painters in their medium of photography, capturing the moment of the modern world from behind their lens.
Fran Lebowitz, c 1978.
Another example of the modern day flâneur that comes to mind is the writer, raconteur, New Yorker, social commentator, and exceedingly funny Fran Lebowitz. I would call Fran a flâneur because she is constantly observing and commenting on modern life with her brilliant and satirical wry wit. Here is a great interview with Fran on “observing.”
As an observer of people, Fran is so detached from the social network that she does not even own a computer or a cell phone for which she complains everyone is looking down at all the time and not paying attention to what is happening immediately all around them. Fran on the other hand is completely paying attention to her surroundings making quick-witted commentary on human doings and beings as she does on the lecture and talk show circuit as well as most recently in the acclaimed Netflix docuseries "Pretend It’s a City," a talking tour of New York City featuring her pal the director Martin Scorsese who participates in the conversation. This docuseries presents classic Fran in her witty flâneur best.
Speaking of New York, on my last visit to the Big Apple in summer of 2019, my intention was to make drawing studies for future paintings. Spending time in Central Park, I found a big boulder on which to sit and draw looking towards Central Park South and the skyline. Before I knew it, there were dozens of people scrambling on the same big bolder to take a selfie with the Manhattan skyline behind them. They didn't stay to look at the skyline.
Sitting outdoors with a friend, drawing. Sipping coffee.
This made me think of how much people are missing the point when one is traveling and experiencing a novel setting and the focus is on the selfie. There is a history of the setting. There is the landscape. There is the architecture. There are the city dwellers. When I was sitting there, patiently waiting for the picture taking to end before I could resume my sketching, the thought occurred to me—what if all these people had a sketch book and pencil instead of an iPhone? They would be forced to spend time and to take in all the data of the natural world. It would not be the other way around, where all the data would be stored in an iPhone in a nanosecond with absolutely little recollection of what they just saw.
Watching these tourists also made me think how much we miss in our own world filled with modern distractions. What I find is when I am spending time sketching, even if only for 15 minutes, is that I am taking in so much information of the subject that I can store it in my brain and utilize the imagery at a later date to complete sketches off site with no visual aid other than my imagination and memory. This is a benefit of spending time intentionally in observation. My memories of that visit to New York are still with me and not so much in my phone.
Recent coffee with a friend, sitting outdoors under a tent. The view from my chair.
When I draw, often I am overhearing snippets of conversation around me. Sometimes, I find these snippets very interesting and if possible, make note of what I am hearing in my sketch book as part of my drawing experience. Capturing dialogue overheard in public is one of the techniques writers use when they are working out dialogues and scripts. It’s an interesting happenstance activity for sure.
Here is a little dialogue I captured one afternoon while sitting at Starbucks on First Avenue in downtown Seattle across the street from the Pike Place Market:
“If you don’t care, there’s still the sun and the moon and I will be OK. Just checking in.”
I found these words of prose to be profoundly beautiful, especially as they were coming from someone who was talking to themselves and who looked as though they were experiencing mental illness or addiction. I believe on some level these words were spoken from a place of truth in that person’s being.
“Neighborhood accordionist.” Drawing 2021.
The pandemic has posed an underlying instability to our daily lives that force us to construct some form of stability to navigate these challenging times. We will get past these difficult times. In the meantime, I take it as my call to action to seek out and to take in the beauty and charm of happenstance that exists in every day life.
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.”
—William Shakespeare, “As You Like It.” 1599.
I suppose I am a bit of a flâneur as I make my observations as an artist. I find that the world really is a stage and there is theatre all around us. With our worlds temporarily slowed down by the pandemic, this is a great time to take in the play of life around us, to observe the actors, and even our own roles in the play.
Mary Lamery is a lifelong resident of Seattle, Washington, USA and native of the Pacific Northwest.
Lamery paints regional landscape in a manner that leans towards 19th century French Impressionism. Her landscapes invite the viewer to add to the backstory of the composition through personal identification with the paintings and story telling of the experience.
Follow Mary on Instagram.