The 1848 crisis birthed modernist art in Paris across Manet, Baudelaire, and Flaubert
Evidence
‘Around 1850,’ writes Barthes (1967, 9), ‘classical wntmg therefore disintegrated, and the whole of literature, from Flaubert to the present day, became the problematics of language.’ It is no accident that the first great modernist cultural thrust occurred in Paris after 1 848. The brushstrokes of Manet that began to decompose the traditional space of painting and to alter its frame, to explore the fragmentations of light and colour; the poems and reflections of Baudelaire that sought to transcend ephemerality and the narrow politics of place in the search for eternal meanings; and the novels of Flaubert with their peculiar narrative structures in space and time coupled with a language of icy aloofness; all of these were signals of a radical break of cultural sentiment that reflected a profound ques tioning of the meaning of space and place, of present, past and future, in a world of insecurity and rapidly expanding spatial horizons. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1663
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Jameson’s rival periodization — Harvey grounds modernism’s origin in a dated economic crisis rather than purely cultural change, exactly the contrast the reader wants. — connects to: Early modernists saw industrial city life as demanding a fundamentally new art — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 143; Modernism emerged from the risky space between past, present, and political future — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 210; Nerval and Flaubert’s Orient was pre-shaped by personal and aesthetic mythology, not direct encounter
Broader Connections
- Early modernists saw industrial city life as demanding a fundamentally new art
#expands(0.82) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 143 - Modernism emerged from the risky space between past, present, and political future
#corroborates(0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 210 - Nerval and Flaubert’s Orient was pre-shaped by personal and aesthetic mythology, not direct encounter
#qualifies(0.72)