Contemporary Flânerie: Reconfiguring Cities

Abstract

Excerpt from essay: Contemporary Flânerie: Reconfiguring Cities presents a new generation of transnational artists who respond to cities with the gusto of originary flânerie, so a brief history of flânerie’s aesthetic and intellectual dimensions is in order. Flâneurs of artistic or scholarly pursuits have long been considered iconic figures of modernism who processed newly industrializing cities of the west in subjective terms by aimlessly wandering through them, absorbing startling, contradictory novelties, and translating their experiences into art that was as radically modern as the fleeting moments it attempted to capture.