ABSTRACT
In the last two chapters I reconsidered cities, culture and cultures. In this chapter I look at the emergence of new cultural movements in Paris as a distinctly modern city in the second half of the nineteenth century. I focus on how art movements are produced, and the idea that there is a way of life associated with cultural production. I cite Baudelaire’s art criticism as self-consciously modern, asking first what constitutes the modern period. Looking at Paris in Baudelaire’s time through the work of Walter Benjamin I find a utopian aspect in modernism. Bringing the argument nearer the present I reconsider Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of cultural formations (1993) and end with a note on the particular form of the artists’ banquet. In case studies I cite Fernando Pessoa’s writing in Lisbon in the early twentieth century, and an extract from a short book on allotment culture by David Crouch. Finally, I include a photograph of a men’s public lavatory in Hull as evidence of everyday creativity.
