The two men had an elective affinity to each other

Le Ministère de la Marine (1865) – Charles Meryon

Meryon’s engraved views of Paris. No one was more impressed with them than Baudelaire. To him the archaeological view of the catastrophe, the basis of Hugo’s dreams, was not the really moving one. … Meryon brought out the ancient face of the city without abandoning one cobblestone. It was this view of the matter that Baudelaire had unceasingly pursued in the idea of modernism. He was a passionate admirer of Meryon.

The two men had an elective affinity to each other. They were born in the same year, and their deaths were only months apart. Both died lonely and deeply disturbed — Meryon as a demented person at Charenton, Baudelaire speechless in a private clinic. Both were late in achieving fame. Baudelaire was almost the only person who championed Meryon in his lifetime. –Walter Benjamin [1]

Hystéro-épilipsie: attaque

Photographic Iconography of Salpêtrière.
Paris: 1876-1880
Image sourced here.

More from this collection:

The Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital is a hospital in Paris. Salpêtrière was originally a gunpowder factory, but was converted to a dumping ground for the poor of Paris. Eventually it served as a prison for prostitutes, and a holding place for the mentally disabled, criminally insane, epileptics, and the poor; it was also notable for its famous population of rats.

During the French Revolutionary period, it was stormed by the mob and the prostitutes released, but others (probably madwomen) were less fortunate and were murdered. Since the Revolution, La Salpêtrière has served as an insane asylum and a hospital for women.

Three immoral tales

A 1833 novel by Petrus Borel: Champavert, contes immoraux

Champavert : Contes immoraux (1833) – Pétrus Borel [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] – more …

A 1974 film by Walerian Borowczyk. Tagline: “You don’t have to go to a museum to see an X-rated Picasso”.

Immoral Tales (1974) – Walerian Borowczyk [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] more …

A 1994 non fiction book Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984 by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs, that won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Non-Fiction. The book covers European Cinema with profiles of Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, José Larraz, José Bénazéraf, Walerian Borowczyk and Alain Robbe-Grillet.

Immoral Tales: Sex And Horror Cinema In Europe 1956-1984 (1994) – Cathal Tohill & Pete Tombs [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] more …

Immorality is poised on the brink of good/evil, psychopathology and morality.

To the creator of films as well as other forms of literature, the dark side of human nature has often proved more rich and interesting than the bright. Films and books on the lives of saints have not been as popular as murder mysteries and works of horror. While we may have no desire to experience them in our own lives, terrible deeds and evil people exert their perverse attraction on our psyches. We who consider ourselves moral and upright are often fascinated by the behavior of the pitiless, merciless, and guiltless psychopath. Like a magnificent black panther: powerful, dangerous, and alien, the psychopathic character can have a dark, perfect beauty that simultaneously attracts and repels us. –Gordon Banks [1]

The last quote by Gordon Banks reminds me very much chapter four in Aristotle’s Poetics which explains our attraction to the horrific when fiction is concerned. Why we like things which are painful.

Depending on the translation Aristotle states:

• Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. –sourced here. [Aug 2005]
• for we enjoy looking at accurate likenesses of things which are themselves painful to see, obscene beasts, for instance, and corpses. –sourced here. [Aug 2005]

See also: ambivalence – art horror – representation

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon …

Gustave Courbet (portrait by Nadar)

“I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of ‘art for art’s sake.’ No! I have simply wanted to draw from a thorough knowledge of tradition the reasoned and free sense of my own individuality. To know in order to do: such has been my thought. To be able to translate the customs, ideas, and appearance of my time as I see them — in a word, to create a living art — this has been my aim.” Gustave Courbet, preface to World’s Fair catalogue, 1855.

The Stone Breakers (1850) – Gustave Courbet

Courbet depicted the harshness in life, and in so doing, challenged contemporary academic ideas of art, which brought him criticism that he deliberately adopted a cult of ugliness. [Apr 2006]

Anarchism had a large influence on French Symbolism of the late 19th century, such as that of Stéphane Mallarmé, who was quoting as saying “Je ne sais pas d’autre bombe, qu’un livre.” (I know of no bomb other than the book.) Its ideas infiltrated the cafes and cabarets of turn of the century Paris.

Related: avant-garde – anarchism – government – French theory

Proudhon and his children (1865) Gustave Courbet

The painter Gustave Courbet was friends with Proudhon and supported the latter’s views on societal change. Proudhon was avant-garde in politics, Courbet in the visual arts. One of Proudhon’s most poetic and prophetic exposés was “To be GOVERNED is …” which is reproduced on this page.

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.” (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.)

 

The Big Night Down The Drain

Die große Nacht im Eimer (“The Big Night Down The Drain”) is an oil painting by Georg Baselitz. It was painted in the years 1962/1963 and hangs today in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.In October, 1963, the work, as well as the picture “Der nackte Mann”, shown in the west-Berliner gallery Werner & Katz (Baselitz first solo exhibition), was seized by the public prosecutor’s office because of immorality. The criminal proceedings ended in 1965 with the return of the pictures. Here is a photo of the painting.