Baudelaire and the Power of Colour

This chapter examines a selection of Baudelaire’s art historical writings. It argues that the writings on colour-perception allow Baudelaire to escape a world of subject-object dialectics, and instead propose what can be called a ‘spiritualist-materialist’ ontology. To explain what this means, the chapter draw on thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Varela, and Deleuze, before reading Baudelaire alongside Joachim Gasquet’s interviews with Paul Cézanne. Through this ‘conversation’ with Cézanne, Baudelaire emerges as an ecological poet, who, like Cézanne, sees colour as ‘the place where our brains and the universe meet’ (Cézanne, 2012: 154). The second section of the chapter develops this argument through a reading of Baudelaire’s texts about toys (Morale du Joujou (1853), in particular). Finally, the chapter contributes to the classic debates about Baudelaire as a poet of modernity, the city and the capitalist transformations in 19th century France. Whereas sociologically oriented readers have marginalised Baudelaire’s writings on colour and nature, the current chapter argues that these texts disturb the anthropocentrism that many sociological readings (inadvertently) reinforce. In some respects, Baudelaire’s writings on colour are therefore more challenging for our capitalist culture than his well-known texts about modern urban life.