Jérémie Elalouf
Université de Toulouse-Jean Jaurès
Abstract
Giorgio Agamben argues that, confronted with the difficulties that modern commodities have posed to art, the novelty of Baudelairian aesthetics lies in the radicalisation of the commodity form itself, a novelty that has subsequently been taken up and radicalised in modern art. This paper proposes a discussion of this argument by analysing the role of the concept of nature in two texts which, through their understanding of the role of the object, bear witness of the shock caused by the first Universal Exhibitions in European culture: an article by Charles Baudelaire on the 1855 Paris Exhibition and an essay by Gottfried Semper on the 1851 London Exhibition.
Keywords
Agamben – Baudelaire – Commodity Fetishism – Nature – Semper
DOI: 10.13131/2611-9757/2n3b-rp10
