The Allure of the Metropolis

‘Man as an artist is at home only in Paris’ (Frederick Nietzsche).

The city is the mass collection of individuals from different ethnic backgrounds, with different tastes and different beliefs. It is the center of culture. There are many sub-cultures and niche groups and this facilitates much artistic potential. In this essay I will discus why some artists are attracted to working and living in cities. I will argue that the four main benefits of urban living for artists are: it is a place of many encounters and hence inspiration; it is a place where often avant-garde art is produced; it offers anonymity and the possibility for recreation; and it is the place of modern life and modern culture.

I will examine artists and art in the urban environment focusing primarily on literary writers and musicians. The city is an attraction for artists from both high and experimental art to low brow and popular art. The city not only provides a place for artists to work but it is most often the focus of much of their artistic expression.

In the nineteenth century Baudelaire wrote poems about the urban experience in Paris, and Charles Dickens wrote realist novels depicting life in London; whilst only a decade ago rappers from Los Angeles and New York expressed life in a big city through hip hop. Ultimately the city provides a wealth of inspiration, it is where the majority of people live and it is were human nature and human emotion is most frequently encountered and best expressed.

Baudelaire, a French poet, wrote pioneering poetry about the city and the experiences of city living and modern life. Gilloch (1996: 133) suggests that Baudelaire, “presents the finest articulation of the experience of the modern individual in the urban setting.” For Baudelaire the role of the artist was to express modern life and human emotion and the only way to do this was to engage with the outside world. Schwarzbach (1979: 1) suggests that, “modern life is city life”, hence, the city is a playground of inspiration and the perfect setting for the artistic expression of modern life. Gilloch (1996:138) suggests that Baudelaire had an ambivalent relationship with the city.

The city was both heaven and hell; both bestial and beautiful. Benjamin (Quoted in Gilloch 1996: 138) argued that, “No one felt less at home in Paris than Baudelaire.” This love hate relationship with – and response to – the city was the perfect inspiration for Baudelaire.

Although the city was the location of ruination and intoxication it was also compelling. “For Baudelaire, as for Benjamin, the color and noise of the street and the hustle and bustle of the modern metropolitan crowd were not only vital components of the text, but were the necessary conditions surrounding its genesis” (Gilloch 1996: 138). The crowds and the movement; the flows of people and the busyness of the city were the necessary environment for the creation of art expressing modern life. Baudelaire had an ambivalent approach to the city. A love hate relationship that inspired him to write.

He acted as a flaneur – a walker – drifting with the crowd. Benjamin (1983: 55) suggests that, “The flaneur is someone abandoned in the crowd.” In the crowd but outside the crowd the flaneur receives fleeting impressions of modern life.The artist in Benjamin’s view is a spectator of the urban who is distinctly separate from the crowd in order to observe. The view of artists as flaneur’s, strolling through the city streets, inhaling their surroundings, demonstrates the possibilities for inspiration in the city.

The industrial revolution from 1750 to 1850 produced massive population growth in London. Charles Dickens who wrote and lived in London through these times was largely inspired by London and the possibilities for interaction the large city enabled.strong Dickens, like Baudelaire, had an ambivalent approach to the city.

Schwarzbach (1979: 23) suggests that Dickens had an “attraction of repulsion” towards the city. This repulsion is seen in his novels.strong “Places and people, in the city of London are used in Oliver Twist to evoke a nightmare vision of a bestial city of death” (Schwarzbach 1979: 47). The city is portrayed as dark and evil. It generates fear and suspense for both the characters and the readers.

Also like Baudelaire, Dickens played the role of a flaneur. He was inspired by walking through the city and absorbing his surroundings. “Over the course of his writing career, he began to sense the connection between inspiration and walking the streets” (Schwarzbach 1979: 26).

Dickens’ daughter Kate recalls that her dad “would walk through busy, noisy streets, which would act like a tonic and enable him to take up with new vigour the flagging interest of his story and breathe new life into its pages”” (Schwarzbach 1979: 27).

In this sense Dickens’ art and the city were entwined, the city gave his stories life. G.K. Chesterton (Quoted in Benjamin 1983: 60) implies that Dickens was a flaneur by suggesting he drifted through the city, eyes wide open.strong “Whenever he had done drudging, he had no other resource but drifting, and he drifted over half London… Dickens did not stamp these places on his mind; he stamped his mind on these places.” Dickens expressed the phenomena of the industrial age city like no one before him. He used the city as both an inspiration for his novels and as a setting.

Both Baudelaire and Dickens expressed urban life in new ways. The appearance of larger cities in Europe in the nineteenth century demanded new ways of expression through art. The large, industrial, city was a new phenomenon and needed to be represented in a new way.strong Hence, ground-breaking art often came out of such cities as Paris and London. Gilloch (1996: 133) argues that, “the city creates and demands a new mode of representation, a new artistic sensibility and practice, corresponding to the transformed perception of the urban environment.” The city became the place of modern life and a new way of living needed a new kind of expression. Baudelaire saw the poet as a hero in his battle to “articulate the modern” (Gilloch 1996: 150). In this sense avant-garde art often appears out of the city due to necessity, as pioneering styles and techniques are often the only way to express certain aspects of city life.

Kazin (1991: 130-31) explains that New York in the 1940s was the center of a new style of painting called abstract expressionism.

In New York, abstract expressionism made the city, “the capital of modern art”… The new painting was wonderful in the subversive colors and rhythms that breathed the variety and excitement of New York, a town where native sons notoriously gape in wonder and feel like recent arrivals.

The colorful abstract expressionist painting mirrors the hustle and bustle and excitement of the New York lifestyle. It is a form of painting or representation inspired by city living. Additionally, the city is a place where like minded artists can find each other, help each other and use each other to produce pioneering, avant-garde art.

Nick Cave is an Australian artistic icon. In his early days of making avant-garde punk music he lived in two cities and played in two separate bands. He resided in Melbourne in the seventies and played in a band called The Boys Next Door. The band redefined punk music in Australia: “They were trouble: private school yobbos who refused to grow up, but whose career would be a matter of shaping this juvenile refusal into sophisticated refusal. They transformed yob punk into urbane art” (Wark 1999: 91).

However, the Melbourne punk scene became all too familiar and as with many artists before him Cave needed something new: a new scene, a new landscape and ultimately new inspiration. In 1980 Cave moved to London and formed a new band called The Birthday Party. At that time London was in recession and cultural depression. Wark (1999: 91) writes that, “Cave lived in dismal squat… Gigs were few, but the band were not entirely without friends.”

The fact that Cave and his music were not welcomed in London but he still managed to find a small number of fans and friends illustrates the way cities can provide an audience even for the most eccentric, out of favour, act. Cave’s move to London shows the way in which cities act as a place of anonymity and in turn help in the process of recreation both artistically and personally.