Everyday Life in Motion: The Art of Walking in LateNineteenth-Century Paris

Nancy Forgione
Ambulart', postca laborare. Edgar Degas to Bartholom^, [1883]' Always a city for walking, Paris became much more conspicuously so during the second haltOf thf nineteenth centuiy, as Baron Georges-Eugene Hatissniann's luban reconstruction piograin of the IHnOs and I8fi()s opened up lK)ule\ards, bridges, squares, and otiicr public .spaces to traffic and to view." With bolh its \i;ibility and its visit)ilit\ iinpiowd b}' thai .spatial I'eotdeiins*. walking cinergt'd as a signiticani picioriai theme in inki- lo latc-nineteenth-centiiiT Paris. In refolding the altered look of the city, painters also aimed to depict the eveiyday practices through vvliicii Imniaii life iciicgotiated its relation to the city. Walking constituted one such practice. Its theni;Ui/ati<in in urt focused not simply on the /{{incurs specialized stioll but on pedestrian activity as a wide-ranging modality of lived experience. That heightened attentiveness to walking reflects its centrality as a mode of encountering the world, especially an luban world shifting shape before its inhabitants' eyes. Walter Benjamin daimed that Haussinann's transformation of the familiar environment into something new and strange meant that "Pari,sians. . , . no lougei fell ;it lioine in it,"' Yet depictions of walking in mid- to hite-nineteenthcentuiT Paris rarely e\()ke the profound sense of estrangement that Benjamin, along with Georg Sinimel, Siegfried Kracaiier, and others, considered a fundamental condition oi modern urban life/ By their acconnt, Paris"s accelerated modernization engendered a physical and psychic disruption whose pictorial equivalent one might expect to resemhle the acute malaise of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Berlin street scenes of the early twentieth centuiy. Instead, paintings of Parisian urban life indicate that walking positively flourished and tluu estrangement, while undeniably present, was not the only experience available to the pedestrian. Perhaps another set of feelings is at stake in these images. The intrinsic process of walking, with its phenomenologically coherent intertwining of bod\, mind, and \'isiou, can stimulate what Edmund Hiisserl would describe as a sense of the continuity cjf the self amid the flux of the world, and can thereby help define their relation to e; h other.'^ With the loss of the old Paris, that relation was in need of revising. The frequency of its depiction implies walking's fundamental role in orchestrating the nineteentli-ceutun' Parisian's experience of the evolving cily and in helping to niediate the shifting relation between them. Images of street scenes with petlestrians quite commonly occiu" in Parisian \isual culture of the second half of the nineteenth centnn', pai'ticuhniy in iuaui-garde an, lliougli also in acaclemir an. in jjopiilar illusti";ui(.)n, and in photography. Few of these images. liowe\'er, truly Ihi'matizcwiiW.'u'i^ that is, attempt to incorporate the lived experience of walking inio the picioriai stnictiire in an\- of a varieiy oi' ways that seiTC to register the irates of discursive movement through the depicted urban space. As it Iiirns out, the pictorial examples thai nu)St conipellingly convey that experience come from those artists whom Edmond Durant\, iu lS7(i, idenlified as "the new painlers."'' What is more, these examples appear with greatesl frequency from the late 186()s tlnoiigh the lH70s, as if the process of actually wiiuessing the impact of Pari.s's reconstruction on the texture of daily existence prompted in some painterswhom we ha\e come to rail modernista deeply felt response that fed inio ilie new artistic impulse to depict eveiyday life. Those Inijjrtssionisi painters, sometimes cast i\s Jlaiictir.'i. often walked the city in search of motifs, "Lheir attention, like that oi^ ihe flaneur, has come to be understood as go\erncd primarily bv ocular concerns, yet many of the works discussed here incorporate in some degree an awareness of the body. My account, then, proposes to complicate or revise onr traditional sense of the Imprcssioni.sLs as forging an "optical" practice. What emerges in these pictures is a sophisticated alertness to precisely the coherent intertwining of body, mind, and \ision insisted on in the histoiy of writing about walking. Indeed, the thematics of walkingand the exploitation of Its triad of faculties besides appealing in the handling of the pedestrians depicted within the scene, can also manifest itself pictorially in the traces inscribed on the canvas of the painter's own position in relation to the subject and in the structure of the composition's appeal to the beholder, who is sometimes figured as a pedestrian. A common activity of daily life, walking merited inclusion in the repertoire of eveiyday subjects favored by French painters of the era, yet perhaps because of the tendency to take ordinaiy walking for granted, iLs iniager\' has remained largely unexplored. As a pictorial theme it tends to receive notice only when it features a flaneur. The flaneur, who ijracticed leisurely strolling as a form of enteriainnieui, has figured importantly in recent scholarship as the mobilized ol> sener of the modern city's emerging siaius as "a site of permanent anxiety as well as a source of magnetic attraction," a result of the effects of urbanization and capitalism,' My aim here is not to argue the details of the extensive f/aiieiir literature bnt, rather, to expand the scope of thinking about lhe picioriai siguifirance of walking beyond its limited recognition as the modality of the //'/'/r//r. Paintings of the peiiod show people of c\eiy varieiy and intent on rlie move. To restore to those figuresnot just the flaneur hvn his fellow pedestrians as wella fuller sense of the meaning of the activity, I draw on ihe context of the histoiy of writing abont walking, with particular emphasis on the coalescence of eye, mind. ;uui body as integral to ihe process. This approach iuMiUes revising the prevailing notion of lhe flaneur, whose significance has been largely assiniihited to the logic of ihe

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gaze and all its implications. That model is inadeqttate here, for it focuses priinari]y on ihe Jldneur's emblematically modern mobility of gaze, with little attention paid to the physical act of walking or to the individual interiority that might inflect his reptitedly detaclied manner of obsen-ation. Walking in the modernized city would remain an important topic in Parisian art until the end of the centur\, among painters inclined to pursue subjects of everyday life. As the newness of the experience waned, the motif lost some of its urgency and tended to be less potently expressed in the lSSOs and 189()s than in the 1870s. Nevertheless, artists coming to maturity in those later decades continued to probe deeprooted concerns associated with urban walking, particularly with regard to the relatiiin between self and worldor what Charles Baudelaire referred to as the relation hetween moi and non-moi (I and non-I). As Paris underwent its transition to modernity, the impact of Haussmann's changes had to he absorbed by the body as well as the eye and mind. Ingrained corporeal impulses to follow accustomed pathways had to give way to new habits and patterns of movement. To depict walking was to thematize motion. To step forth into the streets of the cit\' was to submit oneself, willingly or unwillingly, to the urgent tempo of a distinctly urban version of lived experience. As a motif in painting, the walk offered one way of expressing the quality of that immersion. A walk is ephemeral, but for its duration it enhances awareness of the spatial and temporal character of the world flowing past the moving body and thereby makes perceptible "the pure successiveness that governs human life,"^ The literature on walking tails attention to its social, cultural, and political in addition to its phenomenological implications, in ways that help yield insight into the historically constituted ihematics of walking within the depicted space of late-nineteenth-century painting. In the sampling of peripatetic images considered here, no single focus will emerge as dominant, just as no two walks can ever be exactly the same; rather, the diverse issues and aspects of walking will come into play in different pictnres in different ways.
Everyday Walking as a Spatial Practice

acters through the named and still extant streets and boulevards of Paris. A vivid example occurs in Emile Zola's 1877 novel L'assommoir, set in tlie lSr)Os and 1860s. So accurately did Zola first pace out, as part of his research, then chart out in his text the comings and goings of his charactersworking-class figures who in no way qualify ?& jlaneursthat some editions include a present-day map of Paris along wbich tbe reader can retrace tlieir routes.'" How that conception of walking as a mobile spatial practice expressed itself in art can be seen in Pierre-Anguste Renoir's The Pont des Arts, Paris, of about 1867-68, a presentation of pedestrian life in the temodeled city as a diverse population on the move {Fig, 1). The Pont des Atts, Paris tends to be categorized as a panoramic vista or cityscape, whose gronnd-level viewpoint recalls tbe tradition of Camille (-orot and whose content celebrates the "new" Paris." The painting depicts a freshly remodeled segment of the city, offering a view of the Pont des Arts from a standpoint on the Quai Malaquais, just beneath tbe Pont dn Carrousel. Recognizable structures in the distance juxtapose old and new Paris, with the twin roofs of the Chatelet theaters on tbe left, built five years earlier, contrasting with the historic presence of the large dome of the Institut de France on the right.'* The loftiness of the cloudspattered sky, the sparkling drift of the Seine on the left, and the crisp clarity of the light and shadow effects conjnre up tbe palpable atmospbere of a fine day. The expansive feeling of openness strikingly acknowledges Haussmaini's success in bringing light and air to tbe formerly dark and cramped area around tbe Seine. However, rather than teiterating Haussmann's much-discussed alterations to the site, I want to focus on the people, who do not merely function as subordinate staffnge. The dense human activity that invigorates the scene treats walking in Paris without focusing on the fUineur. The extensive assortment of pedestrians forms "a representative selection of current societ)'," including tourists, the well-todo, working-class figures, and imperial guardsmen. '" Thus, some of the walking is practical and some is for pleasure. As tbe pedestrians flow along the bridges or mill about on tbe quai, their paths and patterns of movement are largely dictated by the freshly imposed urban layout yet at tbe same time contribtite to defining the evolving identity of tbe reconfigured city. The peripatetic practices of a city reveal an important dimension of the reciprocal relation between inhabitants and milieu. If Haussmann inflicted his governiiieiu-approvecl urban vision on a largely luireceptive populace, they (otild at least to some degree temper their submissiveness to the plan by adapting it to their own pinposes. The literature on walking contends that one of its powers is the capacity to integrate and reconcile inner self and outer world. The thri\ing pedestrian traffic in The Pout des Arts signals that even before the reconstruction reached ils end, Parisianswhether conscioitsly or notrose to the challenge, enacting the process of mediation that walkitig can help accomplish. We know thai Renoir was no great admirer of Haussmann's architecture."' To my mind, this painting depicts not a static view that celebrated the "new" Paris btit, ratber, the dynamic process wbereby its people begin to settle in anri develop new modes of interaction with the en\ironmcnt that will gradiialh' reinvest the city witb human meaning. ' The Po?it des Arts benefits fi om a compositional and tempo-

Michel de Certeaii defines pedesirians as "ordinar\' practitioners of the cit\'" and understands walking as a spatial practice, in which the moving body articulates the shape of the walk.'" Walkers make use of cities; pedestrian activity figures as one of the factors that animates a place and turns it into a lived space, Elizabeth Grosz contends that bodies and cities interact in a deeply reciprocal relation, in which "bodies reinscribe and project themselves onto their sociocultural environment," and that en\ironmeiu, in turn, both prodtices and reflects the interests of the body." Sucli theories hold that walking is a basic modaliiy of everyday life and that its "ordinary practitioners" exercise a certain positive and interactive force. The emergence of walking as a repeated motif in midto late-nineteenth<entur\' Parisian art snggests that the city's remodeling brotight about a heightened awareness of the mtiiual power of bodies and cities to affect one another. A nitinber of views of Pat"is present it as a place articulated by the discursive movement of ordinary pedestrians, not just Jlaneurs. Walking as a theme also appeared in the literattire of the period: French Realist novelists often walked their char-

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! Pierre-.\ugtLslc Renoir, The Pont des Ari.\. Paris, ca. 1867-08. Pasadena, The Norton Simon Fouiiflatioii (artwork in the public domain)

ral stiiictiue more complex than most of Renoir's stibsequent paintings. Initially, the vastness of the sky and the hori/.onial sweep of btiiidings in the distance di^aw the eye to the outer reaches of the pictorial space. Cradtially. the eye tracks inward, working its way back toward the picture surface, noting along the way the Pont des Arts in the deep left, dotted with se\eral dozen pedestrians, then the pleasure boat in the middle distance, alongside ol whicii nitmcroits figin~es embark, disembark, or just meander about on the open space of tbe quai. Finally, as the viewei's attention moves to the immediate foreground, the presence of yet another register of human figures asserts itself as one notices, along the bottom edge of the canvas, the cast shadows of people crossing tbe bridge overhead, tbe Potu du C^airousel. which lies outside the pictorial s]3ace. hi the })rocess of retracting one's gaze from backgroiuid to foreground, the beholder's experience of the painting undergoes a shift. While tbe distant reaches of atmospheric space are rendered with tbe son of optical emphasis traditionally associated with Impressionist painting, the kind of attention called for by tbe lower foreground of the composition elicits a sensation of one's vistial faculty returning to its source, that is, to its etnbedcfedness in tbe body. The physical movement implied in acljusting one's angle of vision from gazing skyward to looking downward at what lies before one's feet acts as a reminder of the eiiibodiedness of the viewer as well as of tbe painter. Further contributing to that impression is a strong sense of the corporeal situatedness of the painter that stems from the awareness that

be stands sandwiched between two parallel moving lines of liiiiTutii jjresence: the row of passing shadows at his feet and ihe tinseen pedestrians who cast them from the bridge overbead. The inclusion of a corporeal with an ocular appeal to the viewer hints at Renoir's experiential sensation of bis own bodily stillness in tbe midst of the ongoing circulation above, below, and beside him,'''* I staled above that this painting treats walking withotit reference to the Jlc'meur. However, Renoir's evocation of the painter's presence just outside the pictorial space calls to mind tbe Jlaneur characterized by Baudelaire in The Painter of .Modern Life," who aims "to see the world, to be at the center of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world, . . ."''' If indeed the painter's observational detachment here earns him the title of flaneur, he is a profoundly embodied otte. Painted some fi\e years later, in 1872, Renoir's Pont NeuJ, Paris (Fig. 2) likewise feattu es an eclectic array of pedestrian types moving to and i'vo, pursuing midday errands in a sundrenched atmosphere. No single incident focuses tbe viewer's attention; it is a composition that tbematizes movement, rhe itiiplied trajectories of tbe variotts walkers articulate a network of spatial habits and practices tliat illustrate tbe recently developed rbythms of tbe modernized city. However, since the painting dates from 1872, the year following tbe Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, we might take tbe placid, sunny mood of ordinariness to reflect the relief Parisians must have felt, after those latest in a long series of violent upheavals, at resuming the uneventful and unre-

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2 RfiKiir, Pnrit A'cu/, Paris, 1872. Washington, D.C., National Ciallcr)' of Art, Ailsa Mi-llon Bruce C^ollenion (arlwork in ihf public domain; plKJtograph 2004 Board of Trustees, National Gallei"\ of Arl, Washington)

stricted flow of everyday Iife.^ In contrast to The Pont des Arts, Pont Neuf lacks the corporeal immediacy of the painter's presence, for here Renoir distanced himself hy rec(iding the scene from the raised vantage point of a second-story cafe window, signaling his progression toward a less embodied and more optical approach. Yet it is worth noting that a physical act of walking contributed to ihe making of ihe picture: the painter sent his brother Edmond out into the space being depicted, to stroll about and engage passersby in conversation on the pretense of asking directions or the time, in order to slow their progress so that Renoir could sketch them more fully."' Although that strateg)' is not apparent in the finished paintingexcept in the fact that his brother, identifiable by his straw hat and \v;ilking stick, appears twice in the scenesuch vicarious bodily activatiDii of the visual field, in addition to its practical aim, indicates Renoir's conceptioii of it as a place articulated by discursive hiunan movemenl. Renoir's emphasis on the circulatory flow of walkers using the (iiy manifests an understandiTig of the mutual relation of

bodies and cities, and his incorporation of both optical and corporeal aspects of walking exemplifies the efTort (typical, I would argtie, of the "new painting") to convey the pulse of modern everyday life. Compare, by contrast, the work of Renoir with that of Jean Beraiid, perhaps the hesi known of academic painters specializing in Pai isian stieet subjects, who lends to present a moment that has an anecdotal focus. The figures in his compositions usually cluster about a recognizable sitea chiuxh, a theater, a restaurant, an architectural landmarkwhich pnnides a sitiiaiional context that externally moiivates their adions. For example, in his 1877 Thp
CJiurrh oJ .Sfiiril-PhilifjfN'-du-Roiilf, Paris (Fig. 3 ) , p e o p l e e m e r g e

from ihe church and lingei' socially on the sidewalk of the Rue du Fauboiug-St-Hoiiore, a newly fashionable shopping street. Beratid's picttn es bespeak a greater alertness to optical than to corporeal effects: pedestrians are present but walking is not foregrounded as a theme. He captures the contemporaiy look of the city and its stylish population, emphasizing stirface appearances with a precision of detail that Renoii' suppresses in favor ol broad ellects of light and shadow that

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3 Jean Beraud, The Church of SaintPhilippe-du-Roulr, Paris. 1877. New-

York, The Mfiropolitaii Museum of .Art, Gifl of Mr, and Mrs. William B. Jaffe, 1955, 55.35 (:irt\\'ork in the public domain; photograph, all rights reserved. The Metropolitan Museum of Ai-t)

help make palpable the atmospheric space the figures inhabit. Beraud's tendency to dwell on the latest fashions of dress and manner makes his figures seem preoccupied with social appearances, with seeing and being seen. Unlike Beraud, Renoir does not supply an external motivation for his figures' actions in Font Neuf. Rather, his pedestrians traverse the urban milieu in an individually directed manner that expresses internal motivation. Thus, whereas Beraud indi\iduates his figures through outw'ard description, Renoir individuates his by implying their possession of an inner life of the mind. Thai point of contrastthe suggestion of an interior life completes, in Renoir's composition, the triad of faculties traditionally considered integral to walking, I am claiming that an alertness to the mental, as well as the optical and corporeal, dimensions of walking informs Renoir's presentation of urban jtedestrians. By that measure, Renoir's painting brings into plav the full-fledged activity of walking, while Beraud's does not. Walking's long-held association with the workings of tbe innei' life of the mind is the least apparent of its accepted characteiistirs, I'o grasp its significance, we now turn to a brief distillation of the central ideas animating the histoiy of writing abont walking, whirh reveal bow tbe intertwining of body, mind, aud vision inbercnt in the ambulatory process can help enhance the sense of self in relation to the environment. Walking and Thinking Walking is first of all a physical action, which, owing to the upright posture of humans, consists of "a perpetual falling with a pei-pelual self-i'ecoveiy."'"'" Walking can serve practical or recreational purposes; it cau be both a means to an end and an end in it-self Vision plays a crucial part in negotiating the body's progress through the environment, but the visual component of a walk, like tbe physical component, can be

recreational as well as functional. Though we consider walking as primarily a bodily exercise, it can also exercise the mind. In fact, the history of writing about walking insists on a connection between walking and thinking, extending back, in the Western tradition, at least as far as the Peripatetic philosophers, w^ho according to legend practiced a method of teaching while strolling about,^' Philosophy sustained tbe connection, with tbe interdependency of walking and thinking acknowledged by such figures as Thomas Ilobbes, hnmanut'l Kant. (i. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Liidwig Wittgcn,stcin, and perh.aps most succinctly by Soren Kierkegaard, who in IS47 declared. "I have walked myself into my best thoughts. . , ."""* Writers, too, bave repeatedly discerned an analogy between the two activities, proposing that the process and rhythms of walking promote the process and rhythms of thinking.^'' The Romantics in particular extolled walkiug, cspt'cially in the rural countnside, as a ivay of tappiug into mental creativit)'. .'Vs Jean-Jacques Rousseau avowed in his Confessions of 178289, "There is something about walking that stimulates and enlivens my thoughts. Wiien I stay in one place I can scarcely think; my body must be ou tbe move to set my mind going."^'* Toward the middle of llie nineteenth century, bowever, witb tlie rapid growth and industrialization of large urban centers, tbe focus of the discourse shifted from countryside to city, as walkers in major cities increasingly began to articulate tbe nature of their experiences and found that the crowds and commotion of the street, though distracting, did not preclude introspection,""' Paul Valeiy, describing his mental processes on a stroll through Paris, made tbe essential point on wbich committed walkers concur: "walking often induces in me a quickened flow of ideas . . . there is a certain reciprocity between my pace and my thoughts. . . ."^'^ For, no matter what the circumstances of the walkwhether in countryside or city, recreational or practical, shared or solitarycertain con-

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victions regarding it persist throughout the centuries, namely: that its rhythms are conducive to contemplation; that the experience can render more vividly present the sense of self; and that the process helps integrate inner and otiter worlds. Expanding on those claims will help make apparent their relevance to the particular historical milieu of nineteenihcentiir-y Paris. Those compelled to analyze walking emphasize how, within the "lived perspective" (to use Maurice MerleaiiPonty's term)""* of the walk, ihe factilties of body, mind, and vision coalesce to generate a more fully realized sense ol self. That notion emerges as a consensus over the last few centuries, despite the flucttialing meaning of selfliood. Ronsseau set the tone when he observed, "I have never . . . been so much myself. , . as in the journevs that T have made alone and on foot." *" Walking, especially in nature, can enable one to leave behind the social or external self in order to recover the essential, interior self. Although urban pedestrians are less free than their rural counterparts lo shed their social casings, the same claim of clearer access to the inner self is made for successful city walkers, of which the best known is the nineteenth-centuiy type of the Parisian jlaiwur. As Victor FoLiinel pointed out in 1858, the "flaneur. . . is always in full possession of his individuality."^' That intensified feeling of self-presence can in ttnn heighten awareness of one's relation to the surrounding world and can impel the walker to seek out habittiallv that mode of interaction. In 186'? Baudelaire, noting the /Idneur'i alertness to and hunger for ihat interplay between self and world, described him as "an T [mof] with an insatiable appetite for the 'non-I' \non-moi]."" Walking's ability to integrate inner and outer worlds is a consistent theme in the literature on the subject, which holds the process to operate in this way: the physical motions of ambulation can activate the walker's inner, thinking self and thereby bring that self inti> contact with the external world, an encoimter tbat gives rise to a reciprocal exchange or oscillating flow between inward and oiUward attention. That account of how walking actually works in experience emerged wilh increasing clarity during the nineteenth centuiy.'"^ Although the notion of mental t)scillation between internal and external worlds might imply a .simplistic model of an attentivetiess sustainable at a constant level, the \aried states of mind described by walkers run the gamut of possibilities, from intently focused conscious meditation to unfocused reverie or daydreamin other words, the full range of types encompassed by tbe historically specific concept of attention tbat developed over tbe course of tbe nineteenth century. According toJonathan Craiy, "Attention and distraction were not two essentially different states but existed on a single continuum, and tbtis attention was . . . a dynamic process, intensilying and diminishing, rising and falling, ebbing and flowing according to an indeterminate set of variables."''' In believing tliat the corporeal activity of the walk belps stimulate tbat dynamic process, walkers acknowledge tbe body's role in mediating between consciousness and the world, as its motion continuously brings new elements into view. Walking's ongoing quality renders it conducive to wbat Henri Bergson, in the 1890s, termed tbe duree, cbe internal experience of duration that forms tbe basis of tbe "true Tbe terms at stake in this dialogue between self and world

can varv' sligbtly. Thougb I stated tbem above as body, mind, and vision engaging with the external world, in earlier times most writers maintained that the energizing of body and mind tbrougb walking automatically activates all the senses: they speak of tbe fresb smell of countiy air or tbe noxious air of the city; tbe feel of the ground or pavement under one's feet; the sounds of nature or tbe traffic and voices of the city; and tbe sense of taste often stimulated by the exercise. Vision received less emphasis as a term until the inception of modernity, when the rapid escalation of visual stimuli in the modern cit\' increasingly pri\ileged sigbt as tbe primaiy agent of perceptual intake. However, e\en modernist accoinits of urban walking comment on noise, odors, and the jostling of the crowds.^" Tbat full-fledged engagement of the senses witb the world can bind tbe self more integrally to tbe surrounding environment. Because ul its capacity to integrate interior and exterior worlds, walking is understood to have remarkable recontiliative powers. *" A means to belp mediate the disrupted relation between self and external milieu was exactly what nineteenth-centmy Parisians needed in tbe wake of the disorientalion caused by tbe city's i apid modernization. Perhaps walking started to become more frequently depicted in art toward the late I86()s. as Haussmann's rfconstrunioii pn)jecl drew to a close, because it figured so fundamentally in that process of adjtistmt'nt. To vaiying degrees, eveiyone confronted with the transformation, regardless of age, class, or gender, was at a disadvantage, but walking pro\idi-fl L manI ageable way to come lo know the new en\ironmenta necessaiy process for making an tinfamiliai, or, in tbis case, defamiliarized, place start to feel like home. The Flaneur, among Other Pedestrians ! invoke the context of tbe histoiy of writing abotu walking in order to expand tbe scope of tbe aii histoii(al treatment of tbe tlieine. whicb, when toucbed on at all, has been too narrowly conceived. It needs broadening wilh regard to noi just tbe range of issues btit also tbe cast of characters involved. Renoir's 'rhf Poiil des Arts. Pari.s (Fig. 1) and Pont Nciif.

Paris (Fig. 2), togetber with uthei- images shown lieie. make clear that depictions of pedesirians feature a di\ersity of typesricli and poor, young and old, male and female, firm and infirm. Midcentuiy Realist novels, even before Hatissmannization, used distinctions in walking styles to belp define the \arious sorts of persons <)bsei-\ed in tbe cit\. Consider, (or instance, Honore de Balzac's description of a ftutive street type written about 1839: "His Hgbt foot took no step without his right eye taking in the external circumstances witb tbat nnruffled speed peculiar to tbe tbief and tbe spy. Tbe left eye imitated the rigbt. A step, a look! Curt, agile, ready for anytbing. . . ."''' Balzac's account integrally associates tbe walker's mode of coordination of eye and body witb the shrewdly calculating turn of mind motivating bis actions, tbvis implying the body's role in mediating between consciousness and world. That many sucb characters contributed to tbe rich diversity of pedestrian life is scarcely acknowledged in recent scbolarship relating lo walking in nineteentb-century Paris, wbicli bas centered almost exclitsively on the Jlaiieur. Despite the extensive research devoted to him, iht: Jlaneur

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4 Edgar Degas, Place de la Concorde iViscounl Lepic and His Daughters Crossing Ihe Place de la Concorde), 1875,

St. Petersburg, Tbe Stale Hermitage Museum (artwork in the public domain)

resists stable definition. The prevailing notion of his significance has been largely assimilated to the logic of the gaze, a notion I earlier termed too narrow. Attention tend,s to focus on the y7(7CMr's prototypically modern form of mobile spectatorship, with little emphasis on the embodiedness of his vision. A few anciliaiy questions have been debated, such as whether there existed A female counterpart, or fidneuse, and whether the rise of shopping-oriented strolling helped liberate women from the domestic sphere.^" Shopping's rise is also considered a factor in eventually transforming tbe flaneur, credited with keen, detectivelike observational skills and an ability to absorb all that he saw as a stimulus to creativity, into a mere badaiid, a lesser type who gawked emptily at tbe sights and sounds of the city.'*' To put this in terms of the contextual model described above of walking's relation to thinking, the implication is that lhe flaneur's peripatetic activity reflects an active inner life of the mind, whereas the badaud's mindless gaping exhibits the demise of mental creativity, a demise that, following Karl Marx, has often been associated with the growth of capitalist consumerism and its appeal to ownership.^" However, it is not the flaneur^ mental action nor his physical motion that is primarily at stake in those discussions but his visual activitythe fact that as he walked, his roving gaze hungrily took in all the sights of the metropolis. The flaneur, it is said, w^anted to see and be seen, and the modernization of Paris turned it into an incomparable spectacle. Not everyone could master the visual challenge; as Baudelaire declared, "Few men are gifted with the capacity of seeing. . . ,"^"^ The flaneur's mobility of gaze, according to recent scholars, illuminated crucial aspects of modernity, especially in the way it epitomized the modern consumer's eye, mimicked tbe action of the camera's gaze, and anticipated the cinematic viewer's visual practices.^'* Reflecting such concerns, the trajectory of the flaneur's gaze has taken on a life of its own. That trajectory, it is important to note, ihough rooted in, was far from identical to the trajectory' of bis foruard path of bodily movement.

Wiiereas the analysis of the y/ancur presumes the meaningful essence of the experience, as well as any stimulus to creativity it might possess, to derive primarily from the visual component, the long-standing model of tbe interdependency of walking and thinking finds it in the coherent intertwining of body, mind, and all the senses insisted on by writers on walking throughout history. Those writers stress its value as a process that condenses "the full range of thought, feeling, and perception foimd in ordinary experience, . . ."'' Hence, one of my aims here is to draw attention to the ordinary as well as the extraordinaiy practitioners of walking. Tht^ flaneur self-consciously made use of strolling as a means to encounter urban modernity, but any ordinary Parisian on tbe move, whatever the ostensible purpose of the outing, could at the same time explore the city as a lived space. Walking Painters and Painting Walkers Because strolling through the cit\' as a watchful observer constituted a typical practice for nineteenth-centuiy French painters, a number of them have been designated flaneurs. Edouard Manet is regarded as a quintessential example, though be rarely represented the flaneur in his art, Fdgar Degas took as a motto "Ambulare, postea laborare," indicating that a regular routine of walking and observing preceded his aesthetic activity.^*' Certain of Degas's street scenes do include suchy/fin/'i/rfigures and further intensify the focus on the walking experience by evoking the artist's own strolling viewpoint in such a way as to figure the spectator in the role of pedestrian as well. For example, in his 1875 Flaee de la
Concorde (Viscount Lepic and His Daughters Crossing the Place de

la Concorde) (Fig, 4), Viscount Lepic, well dressed and secure in his social standing, has been identified as a flaneur,'^" notwithstanding the presence of his two daughters, whose company, along with their dog, on a family promenade of the sort known as "Sunday //nnmc" might hamper his freedom of movement and gaze.'"* The Lepir family members pause rather unceremoniously

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in tbeir progression across the Place de la Concorde. Tbougb the bottom edge of the canvas ctits off oiu" view of their Ifgs, we assume tbey bave stopped walking because the ctirrent orientations of their bodies wotild propel tbem in ver}' different diiections if they were still in motion. Tbe nearly deserted square bebind them contrasts witb tbe impression tbat traffic fills the space before themtbat is, the space in front of the pictme planefor, as no other motivation for stopping can be discerned, it may be presumed tbat tbey stand on a traffic island awaiting an opportunity to cross the street. For a family group, they display a cmious disjointedness. Jtist as the orientations of their bodies and tbeir gazes radiate ont at disparate angles, so, too, tbeir minds seem to be idling in different directions, laigely inattentive to eacb other and to tbe onlooker at the left, a partially visible man whose presetice balances tbe buman weight and the vertical rhythm of the compositioti.''' The family's relation to their surroundings, like tbeir relation to one anotber, implies not connection but disengagement, in part because of tbe broad stretch of opeti space that separates them from the backdrop of buildings and trees. Moreover, their radical proximity to the picttire surface stiggests tbat tbey are not in tbe depicted space so mucb as tbey are testing its frontal membraneas if, wben tbe traffic clears, tbey will resume walking and exit tbe pictorial space.
Does Place de la Concorde, illuminate the flaneurs visual, 5 Degas, Portraits at the Stotk Exchange: Ernest May. Einancio and

physical, and mental activity? He is out strolling, but in this held moment his movement is arrested, and we cannot be certain what he or his daughters look at, only that tbey are the object of the bystander's glance. The trajectoiy of the Jlaneur\ gaze and of his corporeal path have no more intrinsic weight than those of his daughters. The three figures, arrayed in a shallow plane, do not Interact or intersect, except where the father's umbrella visually stabs the hat of the girl at the rigbt. It is difficult to tell wbether their preoccupation bas an inward or outward foctis, or no foctis at all. The viewer, like the onlooker at the left, encounters this fragmented family dynamic as would a passerby, randomly observing sucb a group on a city sidewalk, yet the proximity of tbe figures to the surface permits no impression of pbysical access into the pictorial space. Place de la Concorde is rare among paintings of the period tbat feature walking in Paris in that, owing to its air of disconnection, it incorporates a feeling often described as alienation. Linda Xochlin, for example, argues that Degas's decentered composition inscribes "in visual terms the fragmentation and haphazardness of experience characteristic of the great modern city. . . .'"" Admittedly, Degas does not present the Place de la Concordea site with its own political resonanceas particularly inviting: the drab colors, tbe emptied-out center, and the steep angle of spatial recession all sustain a certain bleakness of mood.' However, considering tbat Degas also infused a ntimber of his paintings of indoor scenes with a similar atmosphere of anomie, perhaps it is not the geographic location so much as the psychic territory his figures inhabit tbat primarily governs the mood. The dense but enigmatic psycbolog)' of the individuals and the lack of cohesiveness among them emphasize the distance tbat separates rather than the closeness that binds human relationsbips. Adding to tbe vague unease of Place de la Concorde is the

Collector, 1878-79. Paris. Musee cl'Orsay (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by Reunion des Musees Nationaiix / Art Resource, WO

impression that the figures pass tbrougb but do not quite belong in tbeir spaceas if they withhold tbemselves from tbeir environment as well as fVom one another. Walking's powers of integration are not in evidence here.
In another street scene. Portraits at the Stock Exchange: Ernest May, Einancier and Collector o{ 1878-79 (Fig. h). Degas again

positions the beholder in tbe role of petiestrian by inscribing into the compositional strticttne traces of bis own perceptual viewpoint as be strolled tbe city gatbering motifs. In comparison with tbe Lepic family, tbe businessmen wbo occupy the sidewalk in Portraits at the Stock Exchange look relatively at ease with one other and with their milieu. (Closeness ratber than separation dominates the relationships in this composition. but the atmosphere exudes professional complicity ratber than emotional attachment. The figures touch and overlap in the cramped space defined by the building of the Bourse, or Stock F.xchange, behind tbem and the picture plane in front of tbem. Tbese men have come to a standstill, having arrived at their destination, yet tbe act of walking feels implicitly strtictuied into the experience of viewing the picture. The bebolder witnesses tbe figiues at extremely close range as if stepping by them on the same shared sidewalk and absorbing tbe scene witb a mobility of perception that helps accoiuit for the blurring of the clump of figures at tbe right, wbo quickly recede into peripheral vision as one's ga/e is drawn past them to a more arresting point of activity': tbe confidential gesture ofa man whispering information into another's ear, a pairing

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shelter of one of Paris's public gardens, offers an opportunity for private communication.'* Though the mood of their exchange is imprecise, the girls' poses and gestures give pictorial expression to the idea of strolling and perhaps commiserating together as a shared physical and mental activity. In this conjoining of internal and external worlds, the large scale of the figures in relation to their environment emphasizes their inward rather than outward focus, as does their orientation away from the beholder. Later-nineteenthcentury images of walking tended to be less attentive to walking as a spatial practice than those of the l870s; though the girls' moving legs carr)' them into the picture, the composition allows them little room to navigate. The metaphorical depth of their inwardness helps coimteract the iigural and spatial shallowness: that is, tbe intimation of an inner life rescties the figures from being merely decorative. This example of a walking motif from the 1890s, typifying as it does the decorative aesthetic of its era, lacks the corporeal vigorousness of expression that infuses tnany of the pictures of walking created in the 1870s. That vigorousness is perhaps nowhere better imparted than in the work of Gustave C-aillebotte, Caillebotte's 1876 The Pont de l'Europe. Pans (Fig. 7) includes -Afl.aneur\^'ho,in contrast to the suspended animation of Degas's Viscount Lepic (F'ig. 4), exudes a focused energv' of body, mind, and vision. If, as Valerv' remarked, a reciprocity exists between one's pace and one's thoughts, the gentleman's brisk stride expresses lively habits of mind. This y^an^wr 6 Edouard Vuillard. Young Cirls Walking, ca. 1891, Paris, does not walk the streets alone. His figure achieves its distincCollection Joscfouitz (artwork ARS, NY; photograpb by tion in part through juxtaposition witb other types of gaits: Erich Lessing, provided by Ait Resource, NY) the woman adjacent to him takes small, delicate steps, the workman to the right ambles slowly along, and the man iu the right foreground pauses to lean on the bi idge railing. A small echoed by the two men in the left background, behind the figure marcbing leftward iu the distance traces a lateral path column. of movement perpendicular to that of the central figures, and The human interaction in Portraits at Ihe Stock Exchange is in the foreground, a dog eagerly trots into the picture space. more intimate and legible than any to fx' found in Place de la The assorted gaits and tempos establish a network of rhythConcorde, which is only to sav that it better bints at the inner mic motion. life in jirogress, Botb compositions offer up the sort (5f stray vignettes of huiuau behavior randomly glimpsed while strollThe Pont de I'l-Mrape portrays the freshness of pedestrian ing about a city, yet Degas's rigorous control over composiexperience in the newly remodeled Paris. Caillebotte fretion and provocative insertitjn of identifiable portraits into quently sbowed people in the act of walking, both in the city botb scenes belies tbcir casualness and complicates iheir and in tbe coiuitiyside. The traditional connection of walking readings. Despite the openness with wbicb he gi'ants the wiih thinking aligns it with what Michael Fried has pointed beholder access to tbe perceptual immediacy of bis observaout as Caillebotte's interest in absorptive themes in general."'^ tions, his compositions withhold any easy resolution of meanThe Pont de VEwope presents walking as tbe full-fledged physing, in much the same way that he coaxes us into a pedestrian ical, mental, and visual activity that writers on walking have viewpoiiu but tlenies us imaginarv' entiy into the pictiu'e always beld it to be. The interplay between the bodily trajecspace, Degas's ciyptic pictorial syntax exploits the interwotories of tbe pedestrians and the trajectories of their gazes venness of eye, mind, and body movement: the effort to both orchestrates the bebolder's exploration of the compodecipher it costs the viewer a similarly focused application of sition and compels a curiosity as to the nature of the interthat integrated triad of resources. action taking place, which remains ambiguous. Tbe atmosphere immediately surrounding the figures thickens with A different sort of intimacy is called up by the pair of girls "copresence," for unlike the figures in Degas's Place de la who walk arm in arm in Edoiiard Vtiillard's [)ainting Young Concorde, who seem to inhabit primarily their own psychic Cirls H'o//f/>;^ of about 1891 (Fig, 6). This image illustrates, in space, Cailiebotte's individuals operate in social space, witb contrast to the individual isolation and gnarded mental life its poienlial for interaction.^' Whereas the examples by Deconveyed by the Lepic family members in Degas's Place de la gas and Vuillard (Figs. 4-6) focus on people acquainted w^ith Concorde (Fig. 4), bow, to use Stepben Touhnin's words, one another, Caillebotte gathers together strangers. The var"Inner lives can perfectly well be shared."'" Here, Vuillard, ied styles of walking, together with differences in dress and adept at depicting intimate situations but usually setting manner, communicate social distinctions; as a result, interthem indoors, recognizes that an outdoor walk, in the partial

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7 (in.slavf Caillfbouc. Ilu' Pont de VEiirojit; /'{tits, ifS/b. (jciieva, I'elii I'.tl.tis, .Vfusce d',\rl M o d e r n e (artwork in i h r public dotitaiii; jjluHograph b\ Eiich Lessing, provided by .-Vit Resource, NY)

pretatious of the paiuling lend to revolve around issues of class, gender, and politics."'" Those individual subtleties of pace and demeanor, howevei, also imply au attimement to an inner life: ibe figures convey "tbe feeling of being present witbin itieir actual bodies."'" They evince that fluid oscillation between inward and outward attention characteristic of the walker's stale of mind, witb tbe manner and intensity of tbfir looking indicative of the degree and quality of their ;tlleuti\euess to the exteiior milieu. Caillebotte's image evokes lhe repleteness of Walking as an experience, for he manages to engage not only its social and political but also its psychological and phenomenological dimensions. Moreover, pedestrian access seems built into the beholder's involvement with the composition as well. It is as if. tuged on by the df)g's fbnvard surge into the picture space, ihe viewer may imagine entering it as an incoming pedestrian, fn fact, Kirk Varnedoe argued that two disparate focal points compete for attention in this painting: one is the top-hatted man and the other is the foremost workman, whose head is positioned at tbe X-beams of tbe bridge.'*'^ Those uvo viewpoints could be said to accommodate both trajectories of the bebolder-as-pedeslrianhis corporeal path, which follows the dog along the sidewalk loward the central couple, and his visual tnijectory, which, on scanning ahead and being iniercepted by the central figures, would

naiur:illy follow llic iTiiplied sight lines of first, perhaps, the womau's ghuue toward the gentleman, and then the flmieur's intent gaze in the direction of that second focal point of the workman. Thus, Caillebotte incorporates the corporeal aud ocular aspects of walkiug inio both tbe internal and tbe external, or beholding, sirurluie of his composiiion. Pedestrians from All Walks of Life The diverse pedestiiau types tbat coexist in Caillebotte's The Pont de l'Europe raise issues of social difference and social interaction. Walking possesses a certain democratic dimension, in its availability to everyone, and it is practiced on a daily basis by nearly eveiyone, regardless of age, gender, class, or profession. Those same factors, of course, impose certain restrictions as to where, when, how, and how much one walks. Certainly, walking reveals clues about the social, political, and economic stattis of its practitioners, for it is a spatial and behavioral practice that has an "implicit cultural politics,'"'' The sociologist Pierre Botudieu has posited that it is throitgh eveiyday uses of the body sncb as walkiug (and oihei" routine actions, for example, sitting, eating, and gesturing) tbat human beings come to understand and embody the nuances and liierarchics of social rehuiouships and eiiliural stmctures.''" These daily acts, saturated with ctiltural and classspecific meaning, form what Bourdieu terms the hahitus.

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8 Pierre Boimard. Street Corner, ca. 1S97, color lithograph, from

Qiielques a.specls de In vie de Paris, Paiis,

1899. New York, Tbe Metropolitan Musctnn of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund. 1928. 28.50.4(3) (phoiograph, allrighLsresen'ed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

which both develops otii of and is manifested in those practices. C'.ultural structures, however, gradually but steadily evolve and sbift. presenting new types of siuiations entailing beba\i<)ral UIKeitainties. and there emerge new procedures to deal with them. Though fewer women than men Irequented the streets of Paris in the 1860sas scholars ha\e shown, crucial to the gender imbalance was the fart th;U respectable women could not loiter or the)' might be taken lo be street^valkers-their numbers increased rapidly with each passing decade, as new motivations and attractions diew tbem outdoors.''' If images from the 1870s, such as Caillebotte's 1H76 'Ehe Pont de I'Europe, show a larger percentage of males poptilating tbe botilevards, street scenes from the 1890s, for example, Pierre Boiinard's lithograph Street (Corner of abont 1897 (Fig. 8), filled with mostly female strollers and shoppers, indicate how that balance sbifted. As more and more Paiisian women began to appear on the street, and as the growing availability of massproduced garments began to occlude some of the visible distinctions among types, it became increasingly difficult to determine whether or not a woman out walking was a prcjstittue; Charles Blanc remarked in 1877 that "an bonest woman cotild no longer be tecognized by her style of dress."'^'" Certain of Beraud's street scenes raise tbat qtiestion of respectability, sucb as E'attente: Rue de Chateaubriand, Paris (Fig. 9), in whicb a stylish yoting womanthe parisienne type frequently depicted in the late nineteenth centuiywalks out alone, perhaps to meet tbe gentleman in the distance. To add to tbe conftision, the late-nineteentb-century police crackdown on streetwalkers, or Jilles pvbliques, motivated them to camouHage their presence to avoid detection.''^ Claire Olivia Parsons has pointed out that precisely in order to neutralize or "de-eroticize" the public sphere, books
9 Beraud. L'niioilr: Hue lic Ciuili'aiibriand, Paris, 1888. Pai"is, Musee d'Orsay (artwork ARS, NY; photograph by Erich Lessing. provided by AM Resource. NY)

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10 C~,aillel)()tte, Paris Sheet: Rainy Day.

1877. C^lhirago, Art Institute (artw(jrk in the puhilic domain; pbot(3graph by F.rich Lessitig, piovided by Art Resource, NY)

of etiquette for botb women and men developed new rules for dress aud behavior in ifie sireei. Such books instructed a respectable woman, or femme honnelc. to wear stylish yet anonymous clothing, to refrain from looking idle, to greet acquaintances with reserve, and never to approach an unknown manin short, through modest tonipoi'tment lo avoid attracting unwanted attention. Rules for gentlemen advised them to keep a courteons distance from bourgeois women and not to presume to pro])osition or to follow them.'' The new codes of street conduci, intended to ensure a neutral, polite atmosphere among strangers, permitted the emergence of the female stroller in ever-increasing utimbers. By imposing a certain imiformity and predictability' ou public bebavior, such rules also attempted to retain, to some degree at least, the legibility of di'ess, bearing, and conduct as indicators of social meaning, for various ibices in the modernized city conspired to threaten established codes of legibility.''"' Even tbe strictest regulations, however, cannot achieve complete conformity. In addition to disclosing socioeconomic distinctions, walking remains individual, and as such can reveal personality and mood,'''' The new codes of street conduct, iu aituing ibr a polite atmosphere among copresent strangers, recognized that public space is socialized space, in which the walker, owing to the oscillation of attention between inner and outer worlds, has at least an intermittent awareness of the other beings sharing the environment. That particular urban experience of private lives {jtiietly coexisting in ptiblic space finds expression in Caillebotte's 1877 painting Paris Street: Rainy Day (Fig. 10), vvhitli features a number of individuals and couples walking in tbe rain. Commentators often note that the starburst intersection of streets and the monotonous uniformity of the new buildings exemplif)' Haussmann's imprint on the city and its estranging effect. My claim is that these pedestrians,

rather than exhibiting the alienation imputed to Parisians reactitig to the altered envitonment. behave in accordaiue with lhe uevvlv updated codes of street etiquette. Tbcir social couduct does uot make legible their states of mind, but tbe muted atmosphere and the steady, pensive rhythms of walking seem to cieatc an ongoing balance between interiority and outward attention. " The public context of the urban walk does not precltide introspection, for an individual's inner life continuously unfolds. As Eugene IVlink(jwski explains: I go into the streei and meet a number of people, but each of them, while forming part of a whole, follows bis own path and his own thoughts; we go in opposite directif)ns, and yd we i emain related to one another without "touching" iu the strict sense of tbe word, . . . space thus contributes in making us into a societ), but there is always free space between us, lived distance . . . which allows each one of us to live his own life within this space.''" file walkers in Paris Street: Rain^ Day pursue theii' separate, inwardly experienced lives even as they participate in the city's latger social network. The intciTeniug space between oneself and other people has great social significance; sometimes one wishes to preserve that distance, and sometimes one wants to eliminate it.'''' Indeed, the mood of ('aillebotte"s painting suggests the tacit agreement of distance bt'ing maintained. Tbe contingency of rain discourages pausing for tbe social or commercial distractions of the street and renders tbe walking more purposeful and the turn of mind more inward. The umbrellas help presei"ve that distance, as they hold pedestrians farther apart than tisual: the bebolder, positioned as a potential insider, recognizes the impulse of the

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11 CJaude Monet, Boulii'aril tli-s

Capucines. 1873. Moscow, Pushkin Mtiscum of Fiue Arts {artwork in the iniblir domain; pbottigiaph provided bv Scala / Art Resource, NY)

incoming man at the lower right to tilt his umbrella to the side in order to squeeze past the approaching couple. In contrast to Caillebotte's close-up evocation of internal lives integrated into a ptiblic setting, (Hatide Monet's 1873 Boulevard des Capucines (Eig. 11) records an otitsider's distant glimpse of numerous pedestrians who register not as thoughtful individuals but as an anonymoits crowd of figures whose external surfaces coruscate and dissolve in the ambient light particles that form their atmosphere. While Caillebotte presents a view from the street, Monet offers a view of the street that typifies what we have come to think of as the Impressionist attention to opticality, both in its lack of emphasis on the embodiedness of the viewpoint occupied and iu its focus on tbe flickering movement of the crowd rather than on the act of walking. Bodies here function less as vessels protecting an inner life than as reflective surfaces whose integrity is contpromised by penetrating atmospheric vibrations. The Impressionist painters, with wbom Caillebotte exhibited, aimed, as Monet said, to depict that "which lives between me and the object."^" Caillebotte, bowever, in Paris Street: Rainy Day did not fill tbe space surrounding his pedestrians with the optical shimmer of visible raindropswhich perplexed his criticsbut infused it itistead with the felt atmospheric qttality of "lived distance/' Monet, in early city views such as Boulevard des Capucines, brought to bear an ocular intensity tbat tends to dominate assessments of the Impressionist enterprise. Curiously, as he migrated away from Paris to live in a series of suburbs, he began to admit some corporeal traces into his compositions, as if he felt more physically at home iti the cotmtiyside. A luimber of his landscapes, for example, The Seine at Argenteuiloi 1875 and Monet's Garden at Vetheuil of IHSI, feature a path or a road that extends from the depth of the pictorial space to the picture surface, spilling outward to coincide with the bottom framing edge of tbe canvas in a kind of physical o\erttn"e to the viewer

and implying Monet's own stance as he composed a view from the road.'' Monet never shared C^aillebotte's concern with depittiiig the nuances of human interaction. Boulmard des Capueines illitstrates bis interest in optical rhythms of movement, while Caillebotte's Paru Street: Rainy Day emphasizes corporeal rbytbms of human life. Caillebotte's atteiitioti to tbe experiential wboleness of the act of walking enables him to access botb tbe external and internal dimensions of its everyday practice, to represent how individuals negotiate the social aspect of the urban streets aud at the same time remain attuned to their own iiiteriority. By contrast, the images we
have seen by BeratidThe Church of Saint-Philij>fw-du-Roule

(Eig. 3) and L'attente (Fig. 9)focus primarily on pedestrian types that cared deeply about outer, social appearances, th(jugh prostitutes and socialites had verv' different motivations for dressing fashionably when they went out walkiug. Other class-specific tvpes, such as workmen on the bridge iu Caillebotte's Pont de rEurof)e, were afoot for still other reasons and are depicted sometimes in social circumstances and sometimes alone. Eelix Vallotton's 1895 Laundress (Eig. 1^) takes as its subject a typical working woman: laundresses hattling their heavy bundles were a common sight on the streets of Paris in the nineteenth centurv', recorded by artists irom Honore Daumier onward.^"^ The inelegant but efficient stride of Vallotton's Eaundress confirms that she walks for practical pmposes, not for entertainment, and certainly not for display, in contrast to, for example, the dainty female in Beraud's 1888 E'attente, who barely exerts muscular energy. .As in the earlier example by Beraud (Eig. 3). tbis painting cannot hv said to thematize walking. The stylish dress and demeanor of Beraud's fjarisienne transmit a greater concci'n with projecting an attractive exterior than wilb coiuinitning with hci" inner mental processes. By comparison, Vallotton's Eaundress. tm-

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fi'ttered by the need to cultivate her social rasing, appears not to ii;lance outward but to ictrcat to her own inwaid prt'occii[iiilioiis: Wlio i.s to say ihat she does not enjoy tlic relative Ircedoni oi' her walk and the briel' (.ippoi tiinitv. tlurinj^ a he(tic woikiTig day. to be alone with her tliongltts? The notion that a coninion workitig woman might possess an similarK- takes shape in Zola's 1877 novel r. whicli tracks both the internal and the exteinal acti\ity oi'a linitidiess named (leivaise as she trudges aboitt the city on her daily rounds. In painiings of inid- to latcnineteenth-centuiT Paris, representatives from all le\els of s(iciet\ peianibtilate tlie boulevards, bridges, and s()uaies. In am latgi- iiiban setting, the \ariety and density of the population biliig inio play a specific set oi social and culttital issiii's. uhith inllect the oTigoiiig themes about walking ihat ])<'rsist throtigli the centuries. Walking's Discursive and Political Power I he social points elucidated above conceiii what walking can rf\i.-al about an in(li\i(hial tt)attd rclati\e tothe other people present within a spe( ilie public context. How a pedesttian iiguie can l)e lead irom the otitside, however, constiitites a tliiferent isstie from wliat walking cAn do for nn indi\idnal. Let ns now consider how himiaii beings employ walkitig as a kind oi disc ursive tool to titap out their peregrinations til rough an environment, nn aspect that has piotnjjted (onipatison with the tise of tatiguage. The most explicit of those analvses comes lh)in dc Certeau, who described tuban walkers as "orclinaiy practitioners of the cit\." A city is a language, and, he explaitied, "1 he act oi walking is (o the urban system what the speech act is to langitage. . . ." Selecting and cntinciatitig words to formulate sentences whose syntax can van widely depending on the choices made is a proce.ss analogous to deciding atnotig the many options and \ariations offered during the course of a walk. Moreover, walking itivolves "a process of appropricition of the tt)pogtaphicai system on the part of the pedestrian" in the same way that speech acts appropriate langttage''a jjoiiit that reinforces my earlier claim that Renoir's Tin-I'oiil de.s Arts {V\^. 1) depicts I'aiisians in the process of reappropriating their remodeled cit\\ A related, though less precise, notion is oiTered by the ])oet A, R. Ammotis. Remarking on the large number of poetns that chronicle some sort of literal or metaphorical walk, he proposed an analogs' between walking atid poetiy. I le pointed ont that "even' walk is unreproducible, as is every ])oeni. Even if you walk exactly the same route each time, the events along the route and the thoughts are not the same."'^ These theories emphasize the walkei's freedom of choice and < 1 eative output and refer primarily to the corporeal trajccton oi the walker: the moving body composes the shape of a walk ihe way a speaker strings out words into the shape of sentences or poetns. Other analogies, however, stress the level of visible linguistic input received during a walk and ihus track ils \istial rathei" than its iiodih' trajertoiT. F.ailv accounts oi the tuban [ledestriati expeiience sometimes likened walking to reading. Edmondo de Aniicis, in his 1H7H gnidebook to Palis, wrole. "hi walking for half an lioiir yon read, widioiit wishing to flo so. haii a \'olume,"''' owing to the proliiVraiion oi'advertisements, newspaper headlines, shop signs, and posters throughont the c'xVs. Ft an/ llessel, speaking from the

12 Feli>; \'allotton. Laundress, in the ]3iiblic domain)

). Pri\ate collet tioii (aiiwoik

viewpoint t)f early-twentieth-centuiy Berlin, also comjiarcd the city stroller to a reader, but one who actively exercises his perceptual and interptetative skills. '"'Flnnerie,'" he stated, "is a way of reading the street in which people's faces, displays, shop windows, cafe- tertaces, cars, ttacks, trees turn into an entire series of equivalent letters, wbich together form words, sentences, and pages of a book that is alwavs new."'*' His nieatiing, of cotnse, is less liieral than de Amicis'. John O'Neill, in his iiuroduction to Merleau-Pottty's Tlw Pruse of the World, obsened, "As a tool, langtiage seems lo use us as tiutch as we use it."" We might say the same about walking, becattse oi' its potential to reveal tiuicli about an indi\'idual even as tlie individual i'mpl(.)ys it ioi his or her own piu poses. If we think of walking as a tool, anotliei" aspect of its use that merits attention is its political potential. The impulse to employ it for political purposes can manifest itself in |)eacei'iil as well as \iolent terms, as demonstrate d by figittes as differently inlentioned as (iuy DeBoid and Mariiii LUIIUTKing. The ninrteenth-ceiitun Parisian po|)nlafc recognized

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13 Kcloiiaitl Vianet, The Hue Mosiiin with Plains. 1S78, I.os .\ngelcs. The ]. Paul (.eU\ Miisciirii (ari\v()rk in the public doiiiaiti; photograph TheJ. Paul Getty Museum)

its potency, resisting the status qtio dtiring variotis phases of civil ttnrest in earlier decades not through walking per se bttt by taking to the streets and gathering at the barricades. It was no coincidence that Hausstnann's new boulc\ards obsctnxfd many oi those sites, which had gained a political ditiiension, as if expttnging the scene of the action might help suppress the accompanying tnetnories and forestall futute stich action as well. Rebuilding, of course, does not simply erase but creates an overlay of past and present evocations: the proliferation of street iiitageiy following the midcentun' transformatioti of Paris made use of that iitsight.'^ One way in w'hich places becotne meaningful is by accrtiing associations, both personal and national, whicli imbue them with the power to trigger I'ecollection. In a similar \ein, writers on w'alkitig note its mcmoty-inducitig capabilities, particularly wheti the walker I'ctraces familiar pathways. In late-nineteenth-century French thought, au increasing alertness to the crucial importance of memoty acknowledged the body's role in retrievitig it. Bergson, in liis 1 896 Matter and Mewory. dcx'eloped his idea

of the body as the ground of all om^ perceptions, obsening that while not all nietnon' lesides in the body, ne\ertlieless, without tbe body, memories could not emerge into consciousness.'' In addition to its potential to stimulate both personal and national recollection, the act of strolling can also function politically in the setise that it resists the pace, and the mechanization, of modern urban life. A street scene witb pedestrians by Manet, his 1878 '/hf Rue Mosnier with Flags (Fig. 13), has been interpreted as a comment on such political issues. The painting fcatiux's a siiTft hung with Hags to celebrate the Fete de la Paix of June 'M), 1878, but some art historians argue that the paititing offers confusing political and scjcial signals. WTiereas on one side of the streei several well-dressed pedestrians stroll on a sidewalk lined with new btiiidings, on the other side a shabby, onelegged tnan on crutcbes, presumabh a veteran of past confhcts, hobbles not on a sidewalk but in the sheet, alongside a fence at a construction site."" That jitxtaposition of two contrasting types of pedestrians, I believe, signifies more tban

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jtist a social division. A temporal division relevant to the i)l>eration of memoty is effected hete: ii'the one-legged man lepresents the past and the well-dressed figttres indicate the futtue, the logic oi the composition has them moving in opposite diiections, with the veteran heading towatd the shadows in the depth of the pictiue space. The constrtiction site beside him echoes the notion that the old nnist give way to ihe new. Vet the \'etetairs bulk\ coiporeality and oniempathetic sense oi the acute jjlnsical effort he must ex|ietid to accomplish. w'nU only one leg, the act of walking give him a far tnore embodied presence than tbe wispilv painted fashiotiabk- ligtiresijeihajis to imph that, for the pi'cscnt moment at least, the f'utuie is not nearly as palpable as the past. In fact, it seems likely ihai the sighi oi'the veteran would have activated in a coniempot an viewei" the memoiy of tbe recent tiational past. The painting makes visible the uneasy mingling ofOId and tiew that mtist have been a vi\id feature of Parisian liie in those years of transition; howe\et\ it does not typify Manet's compositional strategies. In his Otyiiipiain Le dejeuner sitr riierhe, both of 1803. the stiggeslion of temporal instantaneottsness is reinfoi'ced h\' the sjialial sliallowness and by the iigtires' stillness and i'rontal oi'icMitation toward the viewer.'"^ By conti-ast, the tmcharacteristicalh' deep spatial constrttctioit of The Rue Mositier with Flags accomtnodates an impression of gieate)' temporal duration, as if to allot the slow-moving \eterati time enotigh to comjilete his ragged progress along the length of the sireei. Ihe ladder emerging itito view at tlie boUom edge oi' the canvas reinforces that notion oi steady mo\emenl through the depicted spatial field. The political dimension of walking came into play earlier, though less explicitly, when I proposed that the flourishing pedestriati aciivily depicted in Renoir's 77//' Po?it des Arts of about 18(17-68 suggests that the population, whether ccjnsciously or uot, utilized walking as a means of gradually reappropriating the city in the years following Haussniann's reconstruction prciject. Thai use of walking raises issues involving attachment to national and local identity. Home is not jtist Ihe dwelling i>lace btit in a wider sense inchides the community, the neighborhood, and the city in which one lives, and it sen-es as the point of departure from wliich oue takes possession of the world.'^^ To be "inside" a place is to belong to it and to identif\' with it. hi this sense, Haussmann's defamiliarization of the city ttirned Parisians into outsiders in iheir own community; as Benjamin claimed, they "no longer felt at home in it." Whether or not they disapproved of the transformation, ihe\ needed to come to terms with it to regain their sense of belonging. Moti\ated by a determination probably more practical than political, bttt at the same time not apolitical in spirit, the population undertook, thrcjugh daily usage, to relearn and to reclaim possession of the streets and spaces of the metropolis. That air of resolve may help account fcjr the positive ambience that infuses many Parisian images of walkitig. The Visible Challenges of Urban Street Life Does that claim of a lat gely positive ambience bold for later portrayals of walking? The emphasis of the theme changed over time: in later-nineleenth-centun' images, the attention to the Hatissinanni/ed cityscape diminished, for the new generation of arlists maturing in the l8Sfls and 1890s did not

live through the vivid experience of the restructuring pniject as had their immediate predecessors. As seen in the examples we have uoted from the 1890sfor instatice, Vttillard's Young Girls Walking oi iibmn 1891 and Bonnard's Street Comer oi abotit 1897 {Figs. 6, 8)walking tends to be less \-igorottsIy or less fully themati/ed in the work of that next generation, perhaps because they took their en\ironment for granted. Xonethck'ss, amcjiig painters Inclined to pursue subjects of e%'encia\' life, the walk remained an important motif, jusi as it sustained its fundamental lole in daily Paiisian life. The ambience of it.s later tlepiclion, howe\cr, turns otit to be mixed, conveying both positive and negative responses to the urban environment. For a variety of factors, some regarded as negative, cotild, of coui'se, complicate the issue of whether au individual felt "at home" out ou the streets. Paris's rapid moderui/.ation had heighteued the contrast between public and private splieies. More than ever before, the domestic interioi' was undei'stood as conducive to c ultivating the inner self, while the exterior tirban realm, wiih its crowds and its intrtisive barrage of sensoiy input, was considered invasi\'e to the psyche and abrasive to the sense of self.'''^ In the expanded sense of hotne described above, howevc'r. the stieets lepiesetitt'd a place where public liie and ptivate life inteisectcd^a concept that likewise stibtends the notion of walking's ability to integrate inner and otiter worlds. In fact, with respect to both the home interior and the inner self, the distinction between interior and exterior is ne\er as secure as it is often posited, or hoped, to be.'^' 1 be discotiise regarding the sensoiT o\erstimulaiion of the uiban stteets recognized the permeability of such boundaries. Meyer Schapiro claimed that a heightened sensitivity to that issue was a pix'occupation of the era: This feeling that the seli has been wholK dissolved by the world or the world has been absorbed into onc^self. so ihal the bc;undaiy between self and woild lias been erased or blurred in sensation, is an experience' often described in the literature of the nineteenth centtny. It has its positive and negative aspects, according to the place of this feeling in the larger iield of an individtial's goals and activities.*^'' Scha{)iro's point that dissolving botindaries could produce either a positive or a negati\e experience is relevant here. Urban crowds, for instance, constituted one of the most visible challenges of street life, for being itnmersed in a crowd could pose a threat to one's identity', could make one feel, as Schapiro said, "wholly dissolved by the world." Paintings that focus on the crowd illustrate how gteatiy it can vary in character, and many of them manage to convey botb its negative and positive aspects. Unfocused swarms of pedestrians, as in Monet's Boulnmrd des Capurines (Fig. 11), register the anonymity but also the vivacity of the crowd. C>amille Pissai ro's bustling street scenes, such as his 1897 Honlexiard des Italiens, Morning, Sunlight (Fig. 14), evoke the relendess pace of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, but the articulated patterns of movement feel more orderly and processional than in Mouet's view, hi Vallotton's ctowd scenes, the lurking potential for disorder occasionally erupts: his 1893 The Demonstration (Fig. 15) displays the volatility of group behavior, as the intimation of trouble prompts the walkers to break into a

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14 Camille Pissarro. Hauhvant <te\ ttaliens, Warning. Siutli<^ht. 1897.

Washington. D.C. Nauonal Art, ("hcsler Dale Collection (photograph 2004 Board of I'rustces, National Gatleiy of Art, Washington)

of

15 V'allotton. Ihc Deiiiaiistntliiiii. I8<)3. Ihe fialliilloie Museum

of An, (iin of Blanche .A.dler. B.\L\ 1930.3.13.1 (arlwoik in the public <loiiiain)

run. However, his individtiation of figures into recognizable types resists anonymity, and bis caricatnral htimor mitigates the uneasiness. City ctowds, despite their problematic nature, exerted a positive force of attraction on some individual pedestrians. Fdgar Allan Poe's 1840 story "The Man of the Crowd" epitomized that idea, with its eponymous figure who prowls the city seeking the energy and anonymity afforded by the crowd.^' And Baudelaire, in 1863, noted the flaneur's exhilaration when moving with the ctowd; for him. "it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude. . . .""" Benjamin echoed Batidelaire's terniinologv of habitation, saying, "The streei becomes a dwelling for \hc Jlc'meur, he is as much al liotne among tbe facades of houses as a citizen in his

foiu' walls."' The tise of domestic anak)gies to characterize the street experience tindcrniines the opposition between interioi and exterior spheres. P'or the llaneur. as for any committed walker, the activit\' of ambulation helped concentrate the sense of seliliood. Modern psychology' tnakes a distinction between "strongbarrier" and "weak-barrier" individtials, speculating tbat strong-barrier persons have a firmer sense of self, which enables them to experience the en\iionment more vividlv than weak-bairiei- persons.''^' That veiy die hotomy is peisonified in the nineteenth-centuiy types of the Jlaneur and the badaud: wlieteas the Jlaneur has a clear sense of himself, an ontological confidence, the hadaiid's botuidaries are desciibed as weak and porotis. As Fonrnel explained in 1858, "The simple flaneur. . . is always in full possession of his individualitv. whereas the individualitv of the badaud disa|> peats. It is absorbed by the otitside world, which intoxicates him to the point where he foigets himself."'" Thtis, the /)//f/rt(/(/exemplifies the condition Scha|)iro described as the self being "wholly dissolved by the world." By contrast, the Jlaneur, because he felt at home in his outdc^or territot7, could purstie his interior life even amid the crowds, !n any case, the Jlaneurs presence on the botilevards diminished toward the end of the centttry; as noted earlier, the rise of consumer culiure is said to have helped tuin him into a
imdaucL

Night Strolling Another enviioninental factor acknowledged as a potential threat to tlie stability of personal boundaries is darkness. Nigbt transfbrtns the cit\, as Balzac explained; "Passing that way in the davtime, nobody could imagine what all tbose

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Streets became at night. . , ."''" The risks of walkint; imoKe more than the imsavon' or rriniinal clcnu'nl ihat emerges after stmdown. Those who have wiiilen aljoiit the spatial plienoiiu-nolojn, ofclaikness assert ihai whcieas daylight enforces the sepaiaticjii of Hguie and ground, niglit's ahihty to diminish the distinction between figure and environment can undermine t!ie sense of self'" Ahhotigh hiipressionism's snnstruck vaporization of form had already cliallengt^d daylight's hold on clarity of ontline, nnsetthng some of its vieweis. nighi has an even greater claim on the power lo infiltrate and obscure form. Yet the dark, like llie tiowd, (jffers bolh tiegative and positive possibilities. Two images of walking in nighttime Paris, one by Georges Senrat, one by Bonnard, illustrate those options. Seurat, in the 188()s, took up the theme of walking figures in a series of drawings.'" In his 18H7-88 Nifr/ii Stroll (Fig. 16), a woman in profile glides throtigh the gaslit evening streets of Paris. Like the woman in Beratid's 18HH L'atlenlf (Fig. 9), her utiescorted fignre takes tlie form of a dark silhouette and raises the issue of respectability, though the title places tlie emphasis on the walk. However, while Bcrand's attention to fashionable details of dress and manner implies concern with the outward presentation ofthe self t< others, Setirat communicates inwardness by stippressing surface details and texttnes of clothing, skin, atid hair and distilling the figure to its essential shape. If, as Valeiy claimed, there is a recipiocity between one's |)ace and one's thoughts, her (luidity of movement .serves as a bodily analogue to the flow of inner consciotisness. Her milieti is not so nuich the sights ol the city, whose details are also muffled, as the ambient twilight atmosphere, whose muted embrace seems to wrap her in her thoughts, Tlie atmosphere feels filled rather than einpt). witli a palpability both meteorological and psychological, fhe figure's softly blurred outlines .seem to mimic the dissolving of lioundaries between self and world, but the effect is not threatening. Rathei, it connotes a sense of belonging, as if ihe woman's integration iuio the eiuironment strengthens hi-r hold on inwardness and leinlorcfs her air ol self-possession, in nuich the same wa\ ihai the flannir's immersion in a crowd seems to fortii\- his individuality. Bonnaici offered a vei"v diifeient expeiieiice of night. Ati ;nid walkei. Bounaifl often depicted the streets of Paris filled with pedestrians in both daytime and evening. Instearl of ihe hiislii'd lluidity of ,Setii'at'.s niglit stroller, Bonnaixl's coloi'
l i t h o g r a p h '/lie St/iifnr til Ei'i'iiiii^ ol' Lihoul 1 8 9 7 - 9 8 (Fig. 17)

16 (leorges Seurat, Xiglil Sholl. 11SS7-)SH, Location tinknown (artwork in the public domain)

to negotiate the sensory commotion of the night streets has a diminishing I'ffect on the hgtu'e of the woman, who desjiite her firm otitline seems less self-possessed than Setirat's figtu'e.

feattii es a woman sharph' outlined against a pool of liglit who pi(ks her way tareltilly through tlu- night streets, llaish couirasts of light and shadow and disorieiiiiug leiiections make it difficult to distinguish among the Jtimble of figtires crowding ihe left-hand side of the composition. O n e of night's weapons is its potenlial to thwart perception, to gi\'e rise to pri cisely the atira of innrky tonfusioti Botinard evokes in this work. Although in the latter part o f t h e centtin' (ewer cotiipositions position the spectator as pedestrian, heie the pioximity and cropping of the figuies at the ieit approximate the close-up viewpoint of a passerb\'. The indistinctness of e\er\tliing except the focal figure, whose claiit) isolates her frt)mand sttggests her own awaieness of her separateness fromher sitrroundings, creates a dissonant atmosphete. The sense of the physical and psychic exertion required

Everyday Life in Motion One last asp<'(t of walking uot yet full\- considered is how its bodily motion calls attention to its immersion iu a spatioieiiipotal mattix. The jjercepttial exjjerieiice of the walk unfolds teinpoialK as the hod\ proceeds thiough space. To depict walking was to e\<ike mo\-ement. In the second half of ilie nineteenth centtu-\, Paris became a city irrevocably on the move. Blant, in his 1877 book Arl in Oninmi'iil nnd Dress, obsei"\e(l that e\en ctirient women's fashions seemed predicated on the idea of rapid movement: the silhouettes of dresses atid haiistyles looked "as thotigh they were always to be seen in profile" as the wearer hastened past. ' T h e female figure illustrated in Blanc's text (Fig. 18) in fact bears a passing I'esemblanct' bolh to Beraud's jxirisii'itiu- (Fig. 9) and to Seurat's night stroller (Fig, l(i): all tlnee are shown mo\ing ill profile. Mocking and at the same time underlining the new piciorial coiiceiii with presenting effects of nio\emerU is Bridet's lendering of a booled fool in ihc act of energetic
walking, titled F.ssai dr printtirr iiitnivi'uwttlislf (.\l!i'i/i/}l al Move-

mcnlisl Painting) (Fig, 19), from an 1884 catalogue of the

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17 Bonnard, The Square at Evening,

ca. 1897-98. Washington, D.C., The Phillips CJollcction

Incoherents, a humorous group whostr work often satirized current trfuds. The ordinariness of thf hoot itsflf stres.ses the ordinariness of the activity; the iate-ninfteenth-centiii^ tirge to portray the body in m(tion derived not from the traditional artistic doctrine that the human body in action amounted to the best picture of the luinian soul but, ^athel^ from ihf interest in presenting the flow of fvf lydav life. hiterest in the analysis of physical movenifnt grew rapidly during the nineteenth century, encouraged and aided hy the new medium of photography. Though, initially, lengthy exposure times meant that moving objecLs were precisely what photography left out, within a few short years the documentation of movement became one of its most impressive accomplishments.'"' By ihe 1850s and lStiOs, pedesirian street scenes such as Hippolyte Jotivin's The Paul \'fuf, Paris of about 1860-65 (Fig. 20) had begun to disclose new knowledge, not visible to the naked eye, ahout oidinan actions such as walking."' Photography's visual revelations profoundly influenced the look of the painthig of the era, as is well known. The photographic quest to analyze movement took its own direction, when Eadweard Muybridge and Etiennejules Marey ttnned their attention to the study of human and animal locomotion. Ail the contexts of walking as a fertile dimension of human experience with sociocultural, phenomenological, and psychological resonance developed in the mid- to late-nineteeiith-centui^' paintings considered here Muybridge and Marey carefully eliminated from their photographic studies in the 1870s as they narrowed their focus to the physical dynamics of movement, To reduce the walking figure to a diagrammatic sequence, Marey situated his model against a black backdrop and clothed him in a black outfit marked with white stripes to delineate limbs andjoints, which effectively eclipsed signs of personality and social class and diminished the weight and shape of the body itself (Fig. 21). Such studies suppressed hoih walking's outward contexts and

its inwai'd density, leaving out the accompanying mental. \isual, and percepttial processes (hat Tnake walking a (|uintessential human undertaking and that interconnect the individtial with the surrounding environment. What the paintiiigs suiTeyed here communicate, by ct>ntrast, is die sense of walking as a familial- and mundane but nonetheless fundamental and meaningful activity. Walking constitutes snch a basic modalit)'of experiencing the world that it often escapes notice, in art as well as in life. The pedestrian activity that animates many painted cit\scapes of thf "new" Paris has aiotised far less commenian than the Hanssmannized architectural enviionment and its estranging force. Bodies and cities, however, interact in a deeply reciprocal relation. Walkingtraditionailv credited with the power to integrate and reconcile inner and outer worlds Hgures as one of the everyday practices throtigh which human life negotiates its relation with the milieu. In this essay. I have drawn attention to walking's emergence as a frecjuent pictorial theme in Parisian art of the second half of the nineteenth centuiy. Images by certain modernist painters, who themselves strolled the city in the manner associated with ihe Jldneur, reflect an intuitive awareness of the heightened role walking played in mediating the relation hetween self and wcjrld, in the wake of Haussmann's disruption of the familiar environment. Urban modernity could certainly, as early social theorists claimed, beget estrangement, but that was not the only condition, or set of feelings, available to the pedestrian. The paintings explored here impart a variety of experiences that express the positive as well as the negative dimension of tirban street life. Walking's mediative power offers a means through which the pedestrian, whether consciously or not, can "use" the cit\. Moreover, walking's traditionally understood ability to enhance the sense of thf continuity of the self amid the flux of the world fiidows it with an intrinsically positive potential. Walking's usefulness as a tool fbr coming to terms with

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19 Bridet, Essat de peinture mouvementiste (Attempt at Movementist

Faintiui^). 1884. New Brunswick, N.[., [ane Voorhces Zimmcrli Art Museuiii, Rutgers. The Statf University of Nfw Jersey. Acquired with the Herbert D. and Rtith Schimmcl Mtiscum Libraiy Fund (photograph by Jack Abraham, provided by the Zimmerli Art Museum)

18 illustration from Charles Blanc. .\t1 in On^nmnU and Dress, London, 1877, 273 (artwork in the public domain)

uibaTi modernity was recognized and exploited by the flaNciir. \'et the paituings in qtiestion feature a wide range of pedestrian lypfs, whose \arifty conipfis us to fxpand tbe scope of the art historical tixatmcnt of the walk beyond its pre\ ioiisly limited i ecognition as thf modality of the flaiimr. Thtis, I have attempted to restore to thosf othfr, "ordinaiy practitioners of the city" a fuller sense of the meaning of walking b\' drawing on the context of the history of writing ahout the suhject. lliat histoiy alerts us to walking's social, culttiral, and political implications and stresses its phenomcnological fullness as an activiiy that coherently intertwines body, mind, and vision. Analyzing the paintings within that context, as wf havf seen, yields insight into the complexity of their attention to the eye/mind/body triad inhereni in the acti\ity of ambtilation. That attention, uiistupiisingly, is not luiiforni, for no two walks are the same, and no two artists ha\e identical \isions. It manifests itself in a variety of ways: in the handling of the depicted pedestrians, to invest them with both an interior and an exterior life; in the traces inscribed on the canvas of not just the operations of the painter's eye and mind btit also his own embodiedness in relation to the obsei-\fd subject; and in the stiuctiire of thf |)ainling's optical and corporeal appeal to the beholder, through compositional strategies whose perceptual

complexity stimulates the viewer's own integrated ti'iad of faculties. Walking remainefl a common motif in art throughout the second half of the nineteenth centtiiy, btit in the 18H0s and lH90s the thfiiie diminished in tirgency and in corporeal vigorousness. Indeed, the phfiiomenological acuity that characterizes the best of the images of walking, dating from the 187()s. necessitates complicating or revising our traditional sense of thf linpiessionists as forging an "optical" practice. Those painters strolled the city, recording their obseiTations of, and. at the same time, their own sensation of bodily innnf rsion in, ihe tn ban rnilif ti. Walking is, of cotirsf, jtist one of the myriad motifs in Impressionist painting, yet exploring its pictorial depths reminds tis ol the tendency of art to resist our efforts to categorize it. Thfse painters, for the most part, are considered flaneurs. Btit the prevailing notion of the jtannir assimiiatfs his significance to the logic of the gaze, a model that is likewise inadequate: the reputedly detached, iinpfrsoiiai, disemb<jdied manner of obsenation epitomized by the /Idnfiii's gaze cannot accotint for thf fxperiential repleteness evoked in the paintings of walking examined here. Besides expressing emhodiedness, these images also convey the indi\idually inflfcted interior sensibility of the artist. Like other confirmed walkers throughotit history, the artists seem to tmdeistand the body's role in mediating between consciousness and the world. In fact, their practice of strolling to stimulate creativitysummed up in Degas's motto, ".-Xmbrrlare, postea laborare"echoes the long tradition of philosophers and writers who habitually walked to promote thinking. The usefulness of that approach is affirmed by its theinatization in their art. Perhaps that pictorial evocation of walking possesses its own mediating

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20 I Iippoh te Jouvin, The I'nnt Neuf, Paris, ca. 1800-65. New York. Tbe Mtiscum of .Modern .\i't (artwork in the public domain; digitiil image Tlie Museum of Modern Art / Liet-iised by Scala / Art Resource, NY) N " . 4!.Pi'NT
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Ti.d., 48, iig. 'M (artwork in the public domain)

force, remiiicthig viewers ol the fttiidiimental power of eveiyday practices at tbe same time that it allows them some measure of access into the partlctilar liiittne of thiit e.v;perience for htte-ninetecnth-renfuiT Parisians.

Nancy Forgone is cunrntly visiting a.m.stant professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on French art and culture of (he nineteenth century [Department of the History of Arl, John.s flopkiii.sL'iiiversity, Baltimore. Md. 21218. nfor0one@ihu.edii}.

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15. Ibid.. 7. 16. Vor ReiHiir's crilical views on llaiissinaiin's project, see Rol>eil [.. llerI .mi iiulclitfd 1 1 M.iK C.otlifb ;ui<i to 't'lirArt /{/(//c/iV/s inuinyiiKnis rciirliTS ibr 1 beri. .\'tilurf\ Wmiishuj): Renoir's Writings mi the t>f(imi!ivf .Arl.s (New 1 latiK'ir insishti'iil suggestions, and to Michael Fried for his perceptive !e;iding of ven: Yale University Press, 2000). ihc lir-si version. 17. On walking as a process ihai helps invest a (iu widi liumaLi meaning, see Macatilcy, "Walking the <.:it\.'" '.V2. 1. Kdifar De^iiis. t-fttri"^ ilf th'^its. ed. M. (liierin (Pails: Bcrnaid (Irasset, 18. Thai lendency in Renoir's earlv work may lefle* i his admiraiion of and association vvilli Fdoiiard Manet and bis circle; on lbe inclusion ol 2. See Da\i<l Maeaulex, "Walking the City; An lissay <iii Peripatetic Piaebdtb corporeal and optical appeals lo ihe beholder in the work of Maliies and I'oliiits," i'.njiilaU\m. .Wiiliiri'. Siui/ilifm 11, im. 4 (DccciiilK-r nei and bis ci)lleagiies. see Miebael Fried. ,\Uiiiel\ Miuternism. or The UOOO): ">-(>, <in the tomcpi of a 'walking tiiy," wliich lie (.haracleri/eJi t'liif "j t'liinting ill Ihe IfiMh (Chicago; Universiiv uf C^liicago Press, a.s one whose design fatilitates walking and wh<)S(' rongescion wairaLiis 19!)!')), As [olm 1 louse, t'iiire-.Kui^uste Renoir: tM t'lomfnnde (Los .Angeles; il. Belbre il.s remodeling, ['aiis's cramped, dirty, convoluted stieets Cieity Museum Suidies on An, 1997). tt9. poiiil.s oiii, Renoir's presence coini)e!!cd a dilfereni pedesiiiaii experience, described by Ma\ime Du in Henri Faiitin-ljilour's 1870 painting A Sliidrn in tin- Hntii^nolks ideniiC^arnp, t'iiii\. \i:\ urgriiii-.. \f\ jiiiirti(i\ I't sti vif iliim In .wiiiutr mmlii' da lied him clearly a.s one of Manet's followers. XtXi- sihlf (Palis: I.ibraiiii- Haihetie. 1879). vol. 0, 'Ib'i. 19. \'icior L Stoichita, A Short Hisli-y oj ihe Shadow, nans. Anne-Marie 3. Walter Benjamin, (.luirli'^ Hiiiiili'lniri.- .1 l.yrir foel in Ihf Urn nj llijrh (Inj'i(ilaslieeii (Lontlon: Reakiion Books, 1997). IO(>. makes ibis comparison liili\iii. trans. Many /ohn {l.onddii: NI.B 1973). 174. and quotes Baudelaire, 9. 4. The ccmcept ol estrangement and anxiety as ell'ecis resiiliing Irom tlie 20. On ihe impact of those eventsihc Prussian siege ol Paris in tin- lall modern city's rapid growth eiii('rge<l inosi iiifhieniiallv in ihe earlvand winter of 1870-71 anil llie [>o|>ular uprising in Paris, known as the tweiilielh-ceiutin wiilings oiVValier Uenjamin. Cieorg Simmel, and Cummiine, wliii li led lo the ciiv's siege and retaking by govenimeiu Sicglried KracaiLer, with debus lo Kiiil Marx. Kor a succinct siLiiimaiT i>\' forces, followed by the execution of iboiisands of tiii^-nson arlists those i(ieas. see. for example, Anilioriy \'idler. "Psychopailiologies of and art making as well as on ihe striKtures ol evenday life, see Hollis Modern Space: Metropolitan Fear liom Agoraphobia to Ksirange(llayson. I'nris in I)e\jiiiir: Art iind l-Aiftyhn t.ije niiilfr Sie^f < IS7tl-7Ii nieiit," in tMisrm'rrinj^ tlistiny: (.idtiirr, t'liUtirs, ririil ihr ftyrfii'. ed. Mi(Cliicag<); Lniversity of Ciiicago Press. 2002). chae! S. Roih (Slanlojcl: Sianlord L niversity Press, 1994). 11-29. 2!. Renoir's brotber described lbe ciicumsiaiices ol ihai painting; see Jolm ,'>. Kdmtind Iftisserl. "The World of lbe Living Present and the ClonstiuiRewald. ".\iigiisie Renoir ami His Broihei." (nzette de\ tirriii.\-A>1s. 6lh ti<)n oi' the Surrounding World Fxternal lo the Organism" (1931). in ser., 27 (March 1945); 181. htiiwiil: SImrl'-r \Vmii\, ed, Peier VlcCormick and Frederick ,-\. Fllislon (\otie Dame. ln<l.: Tniversiu of Notre Dame Pie.ss. 1981]. L':iS-r>()- Mv 22. Oliver Wendell Holmes. "Tlie Huniaii Wheel, lis Spokes and helloes." phrasing here is pariially iiidebied to Rebecca .Solnit, Wiintlrrtusl: .1 HisAll'intii Minithh II (18(i;^): .")7I. On the signilkaiKe of tbe upriglii pusti.iy / Wtilkiiifi (New York: N'ikiiig. L(.I((O]. 27. liire of humans, see Fnvin W. Siiaiis, "'The L priglil Posiiiie," in t.ssiiys in Phfriome)Hitof(y. ed. Maurice Nalauson (fhe Hague; Mariiniis Nijiiofi, fi. t.ouis-Emile-Ediiiond Dtiranty, IM nimvflli' pi'inluri': .\ fnnjms Hu ffrdupe ]9(iti). l(J4-92. d'njiistes <jui exp'isi- dans tf\ Cnterm Ihirtitul-tbtfl i IS7f)), 2iid ed. (Paris: FleiiiT, 1946): tiauslaled as "The New Painting: Concerning the (Iroup 23. Soliiii, Wtindfiiiis/, !4-lfci. explains lliai the Peripatetics look ibeii of Artists Fxliibiliiig at the Diirand-Rtiel Calleries." in V/if A'nu f'liiiiting;: name Irom lbe covered colonnade, or jierijmtos. of Aiislolle's s<bi)ol in Impres^iiinism ISJ-l-lSNh. exh. cal.. Fine .Arts Museums of San FranAthens, where teachers and studeni.s supposedly wandered to and bo cisco. 198(i. 44-4,'). Ill a relevant vein. Diiraiiiy aigiied Lliai the Impiev (luring instriiclion (a uotiim now regarded as imcertaiii). thereby essionists. as pan of iheir elfoit to i"oiive\ the iiiimeisioii ol modern man tablishing the link between walking and philosopbi/ing. ill the spaces and habits of his daiK milieu, boili indoors and outside 24. Soren Kierkegaard, "l.etler on Walking" (1847): the letter, together in lbe c\W streets, "tried to lendei ihe walk. nio\emeni, and hiisile and with an analysis of ibe significance ot walking lo Kit rkegaard's life and bustle of passers-by. . . ." lliouglit. can be found in Roger Poole. Kierkfgaard: the tiidneii (jimiiui7. Christopher I'lendergasi, l'iiri\ unit thf \'i>iftwtith Cftihiry (Cambridge. niration (Cliariottesville: I'niversiiv Press ol \'irginia, 199!^). \li-l'\. On Mass.: lilackwell. 1992), 13. For a sampling of tbe extensive HieratLire the centrality of walking lo ihe cii'alive processes oi philosciphets in on the ///infill, see, for example, Keith Tester. VVicFlaneLii (London: geiietal, see. for example. .Solnii, WandMiisi, 14-2(i; and Gilbert. Wittk\ R.iutledge, 1994). in the World. I l-l(). 8. Chailes Baudelaire. Ilir I'liintfr nj .Mmlfui t.i/f fiiirl Othrr l-'.s',fiys. Irans. 25. I bat theme appears consisteiiih in essavs aboiil walking. Irom ibe cmlJonathan Mayne (London: Pliaidon, I'JOfi), 9; originally published as set ol their |3opiilanty: see William Ha/litt. "On tioing a |ouiney" "T.e neiiilre de la vie moderne," in ('.iirii>sitk\ fsthftii/im: L'tirt riimiintiijw (1821). in Sf lei ted lMa\s uj Witliiim ttazlitt. ed. Ck-olliei, KeMies (Lonet iiutrfs in'in'ri'.s rri/ir/iii's r/c liuudfhihi: ed. H. Lemairre (Pari.';: (iarnier don; Nonesuch I're.ss; New York: RaTifiom House, 1970). 71-H!^, Freres. I9fi'i}. 4,"):^:iM'i. iboiigiil to l)e llie firsi es.say specifically devoted to the |)leas!ires of walking. For a sampling of such essays, see. for example. Fdwiii Mitch9. Roger (iilbeH, Walks in thr Wurld: Rfjnfsfiikitiiiii iiriil lix/iriiftin- in Modi-rn ell, ed.. The ftmsures oj Walking (New York: \'aiiguaid Piess, 1979). Amrriiiiii Pcftry (Princeion: Princeton University Press, 1991), 9. See

Notes

also Henri Bergson. Mitltn unit Mfmin-y. nans. Nancy Margaiet Patil and W. .Scolt Palmi-r (I89I>: New Yoi k: /one liooks, 1988), 4ti: ".-Vs mv bodv moves in space, all lbe otliei image.i vaiy, while . . . my body, remains invariable. I must, therefore, make it a center, lo wbicb I refer all ibe ()tlier images." 10. Michel de Cei lean. I'/ii- t^iiirtiir iij /.Vciv/rn' l-iji: tlall^. Sleven Reiidall (Berkeiey: Lniversiiy of (,alifornia Press, 1984], 9S, 9(). 11. Kli/.abeib (.iitiS:t, '"Bodies-(.ilies," in SfXiuiliiy luiit Sji/in; ed. llealri/ Coli)niina (New York: Princeion Arcbiieciiiral Press. 1!>92). 242. 12. Kmile Zola. t/ti.\M>mmoir I'Ihf Drum Shop I. trans, Robin Buss (1877; London: I'eiigtiin, 2000}, ix. 13. .See. lor example, .\iilbea Calleii, Ttif .Art uj lmjirfssiiini\m: I'tiiiilnif; Ifthiiirpii' nnrt thf Making i<j SUidfrnity (New Haven; Yale University Press, 2000). 120; Belintla Tb<niis<)n. tmjnnM'iitii.\m: (>rif;hi.\. I'ruitiif, Rrrfptiim (N'ew York; Tbames and Hudson. 20()()). 2H: Julia Sagraves, "The Sireet." in ('ii\tmif C/iillfliottf: Vrhiiii tinjirf.\\iinii\l. by Anne Disiel et al.. exb. cai.. Miisee d'Orsay, Paris: Art Institute of Chicago (New York; Abbeville Press. 199.")). 91. who relcis lo it as a mo<lerii viliilir. and Kermil Swiler Cluunpa, Stiiilifs in Eiirly ImprfysioniMn (New Haven: Yale L'niversir)' Pre.ss. 197!^). l.'>. wbo noies ihai iliis iradition "saw ilie city as a piciiiresqiie airaiigemeiil of aicliitecliiral and topograpbif al elemeiiLs , , , which were \iewer! in a sol'ily diagimal lasiii<ni lioni ground level," On the painting as celebrating the "new" Paris, see. l<)r example. Sagraves, 91. 14. Robert Herbert, tmprfs.tiotntiii: Arl. triMv: and I'lirisunt Stiiim (New Haven: ^'ale L'liixersiTv Press, 1988], 7.

26. |ean-|a(<iues Rotisseau, Les amjessions (Paris; Garnier Freies, 1980), 1S3, bk. 4 (17.'i]-:V2). .See also his 1782 /J'.S reveries du jironifneur solilaire (Paiis: ltnpritiierie Nationale, 197H). On walking a.s a Romantic concept, see Jeffrey C. Robinsfm, The Walk: \'oln on a Roiit'intir tmii^e (Norman; Universiiy of Oklahoma Press. I'JS9), :r. Robin janis, Romiiiilir Wiitini; and I'filfslriiin Irrivel (New ^'ork: St. Martin's Piess, 1997): and (.:eleste l^uigan. timiiunlii Vngi/iniy: Wonhwoiih and ttie .Simulation nj ireedum ({Jambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 27. On the contrast In-tween city and cinmtn life, see Ravmond Williams. I'he Coiinliy und ihf City (New York; Oxford Uiiiversiiy Press. 197:?); ami Georg Simmel. "The Metropolis and Menial Life," in Thf Siiiiiilogy nj Cfiirf^.Siinnifl. trans. Kurt 11. Wolff (Glencoe. 111.: Free Pres.s. 19,"iO). 410, wbo states: "Tbe metropolis exacLs from man as a discriminating cicatiue a dilferent amount of consciousness ilian does rural life," f>ii ihe piolileration of llie thenie aiinmg urban writers aiic! poels, see Pbiilip Lopaie. "Fbe Pen on Fool: Ihe l.iierainre of Walking .Amnnd." t'ar'ia\\u.s 18, no, 2 ami 19. no. I (199,'i): 17(i-2l2. 28. Paul Valery, "Poesie et pensee abstraite." in ()fiivie\, ed. jean Huier (Paris; Gallimaid. HB7). Ui23, translated by Denise Folliot as "Poetiy and .Absiiaci Thought." in \'alei-y, The Au of Poi-tiy (New York: Paniheoii Books. li).">7). f)2. 29. Maurice Merlean-Poniy. "(;e7aniie's Doiibi." in .Vnse and Xon-Sfiisf. trans. Hiiberi L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Drevlus (Fvansion. 111.: Nortlnvesierii Univei^sity Press. 19(54). 1 I. 30. Rousseau, l.onjfssion\. lH.'i. 31. \'iclor Fiinrncl. Cf i/ii'on voit diiii.\ les rues de Pans (Paiis: Delaliays.

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1858), 26,^. Pairice Higonnet. Paris: Cnpilat oj Ihe Wortd (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard I'niversit)" Press, 2002), 218. points i>nl ihat Foiirnel's defuiition reprodtires almost word for word ibai of Ferdinand (iail. /, Farisifns (Paris. 184.5).
32. Baudelaire. Paintn oj AJodeni I.ije. 9. Though uoi publisbed imlil I8<i;^

liie essay was written in 1859-60.

33. Anne D. Wallace, Walking, t.iteralurf, and English Culture: Tlw

tracts his ga/e. Huart, chap. 6. quoted in Bowlln. "Walking. \\'omen and Writing," 6. 7. 49. Albcii Kostene\'ich, hiidden 'treauires liinwded: Impressionist Mastprpieres and Other Important Erenrh Paintings Pifsemed try ihe Slate tteyinitage Museum. SI. Feler\hurg (NewYork; HartT N. Abrams. 1995). 71. proposes tbat the man at the lefi lepreseiils Degas's friend I.udo\ic llale\y.

50. Linda Nochlin, "A House Is Not a Home; Degas and the Subversion of llie Family." in Deating with Degas: Rppresenlalions of Women arid ihe I'oliand Uses oj Feriji/itetir in the Xinelernth Cenlnty (Oxford: (Clarendon Press. iici of Vision, ed. Richard Kendall and Griselda Pollock (London: Pan1993), l.^, contends that as the niiieieenili ceiiluii progressed, essayists dora. 1992). 48. e.stablished the ba.sic tenets of " 'peripatetic theory.' whicb aitempts an explicit and coherent accouni of bow walking actually works in experi51. For a summan of ihe various readings (if the political significance ol ence." the Place de la (Concorde in reference to Degas's paiuiiug. as well as a fresh assessment, see Clayson, Paris in Despair, 329-42, 34. jonalban CraiT, Suspensions of Perefption: Attention. Sjiertnrle. und .Modern Cultuvf (Cambridge. Mas.s.; MIT Press, 1999), 47. 52. Stephen Tnulmin. "The Inwardness of Mental Life." C.riliral Inquiry 6. no. 1 (Autumn 1979): II. 35. Gilbert, Watks in the Wmid, 16-18, discusses the body's mediating role. On the duree dnd the "trtie self," see Henri Bergson, Timf tind Frff Will: 53. Guy Cogeval, Vuillard, exb. cai., Montreal Miistum of Fine .Xrts; NaAn Iwwiy on the tini'iediati' Data ojConsriinisnrs.s, titans. F. L. Pogsou (New tional Gallery of An, WasbingUin, D.C.. 2003, 86, identifies the seitiiig ^'ork: HariX-rarui Row. 1960). 128-29. as the small park known as ihe .Square Berlioz. On parks as gendered spaces, see Pollock, "Modernity and the Spaces of Feminity," .50-90; 36. F<ir a sampling of essays including stich obsenations, see n. 2.T above. and l'rendergasi, Paris and Ihe Xineleenth Cmtuiy. 164-88. See also Gilbert. Walks in ihf World. 19. 54. On the consislenily absorptive ibematics of Caillebotie's painting and 37. See, for example, Kdmond<) de .-Vmicis, "The First Dav in Paris," in <)n his incorporation of both oculai and corporeal modes, see Micliael Studies of Priri.s. trans. W. W. (iady (London; G. P. Pninam's Sons, Fried, "Caillebolte's Impressionism." Rejiresenkilions 99 (Spring 1999): 1879), 10-36, in t^liarles Harrison and Paul Wood, eds., Arl in 't'heoiy. 1-51. See also Kirk \'arnedoe. Guslave Caitteholle (New Haven; Vale L'nil}it')~l900: .An .Anthology oj Changing tdeas (Maiden. Mass.: Blackwell, versity Press, 1987), 16-17. Ciaillebotte's depiction ofw-alking in (be 1998). 887. counti-yside includes, for example, his 1881 Rising Road. 1884 Man in a 38. See Wallace. Watking, Literature, and English Cullure, 9: and |ohn Kldei, Smoik (also known as Ealher Mnglmrf on thf Road hetween Saini Clair and Imagining the F.arlh: Poftiy and the Vision oj Nrituie (L'rbana: LIniversity of t'.tretal). and 1884 Portrait of M. Rirliard Callo. ali reproduced in Distel ei Illinois Press, 198,5). 5, al.. Gustave Cailt^'hotte, 2.')9, 263, 281. 39. H.inoie de Balzac, .1 Harlot ttigh and Low (1839-47), trans. Ravncr 55. On tbe iiotioti of "copresence" and its roie in the UKxlerii world, .see, lieijpenstell (l.oiidon: Penguin. 1970), 137-38. for example. Deirdre Boden and Haney L. Molcjtcb. "Tbe Compulsion of Proximity." in XowHi-re: Spare. Time and Modmiily. ed. Roger Fried40. On llie f|uesiion ol ihe Jlanfu.w's existence and the impact of the rise land and Boden (Berkeley; University of California Pre.ss, 1994). 257ol shopping on the roie of women al home and in ihe street, se<' Jaiiel 86. Wolff, "The Invisible Fl/ineuse: Women an<i llie Literature of Modernity." Thi'ory. Culture, and Soiiely 2, no. .3 (198,i); 37-46; Gris<4da Pol56. On tbe social impliciilions of bodily comportmeni, see Pierre Bouilock, "Modernily and the Spaces of Femininiiy." in Vision find Dijjerenir: dieii, Dislinrtiiin: A Sodat Critique of the fudgemeni oj 't'asle, trans. Riciiard Femininity, t-emiiii.sm and htistories oj Ail (London: Roiitledge. 1988). 50Nice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1984), 2!8. For iii90: Susan Buck-Morss, The t>ialcilirs oj Seeing (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT lerpretaiions thai assess tbe sociopoliiical implicaiions ol ilie painting, Press, 1989); .Anne Ftiedberg, Window Shof>ping: Cinema and the Postmodsee, for example. .Sagraves, "The .Street." 97-98; and Fried. "Caillefm (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Ankc Gleber, The botte's Impressionism," 21-24, An of 'faking a Walk: tlanme. Literature, and Film hi W'fiinar Cullure 57. I'be pbrase comes from Jean Slarobinski. "lbe Naimal and Literarv (Princeion; Princeton University Press. 1999); and Rachel Bowlby. llistoiT ol Bodilv Sensation." in Fragments jor a History of the Human "Walking, Women and Writing; \'itginia WooH as Ftaneuse." Stilt Crazy tindy. Pan 'Fwo. ed. Micbel Feher (NewYork; Zone, 1989). 356, ajli'r Alt Fhe\f Years: Women. Writing and P\vhonnatysi\ (l.inidon: Roiii.'>8. \'arnedoe. Guslavf Caillfhottf. 73-74, iecige, 1992). 1-33, 41. See Mariin [av. Downrast E\'i">: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Cen- 59. Macatilev, "Walking the Citv'," 4. tury French Though! (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 119. 60. Bomdien. Distinction, chap. 3. See also Benjamin, C.hartfs Baudelaire. 69; and Fournel. <> qu'on voit, 61. On tbat issue, see n. 40 above; see also Hollis Clav-Ron, PairUfd Ltwr: 263Prostitution in Freneh Art of ttie Impressionist Fra (New Haven; Vale L'ni\'er42. .See Kiul Marx. Fronvmir and Phih.stijihir Manu.srripls nf IH44, nans, Marsity Press, 1991). 5fi; and T. J. Clark, Ttie Painting oj Modern t.ije: Paris in liii Milligaii (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), 94; "Privaie properly Ihe Art oj Manel and His Followers (Princeton; Princeton Univeisity Press, bas made ns so stupid and one-sided. . . . In place of all physical anci 1986). menial sen.'^es there has therefore come the sheer estrangement of all 62. (^barles Blanc. .Ati in Ornameiil and Dress (London; Chapman and Hall. ihese senses, the sense of having' (emphasis in the original). 1877), 27:S. 43. Baiifielaire. Painlrr of Modem Life, 12. On Paris as spectacle, see, for ex63. Claire Olivia Parsons, "Reputation and Public Appearauce; The Dcample, jay. liowneast Eyes. 114; and Remy G. Saisselin, The Hourgiois and eiotici/aiion ol the Urban Street," in Voirn in the Street: txptiiialions in Ihe tiihelnt (New Brtin.wick. NJ.; Rutgers University Press, 1984), 19-30, (ruder. Media, and Pulilir Spare, ed. Susan J. Drucker and (iary C.iimperi The assault on lbe eyes could be ovei"whelmiiig ai limes; as Benjamin. (Cresskill, NJ.; Hampton Press. 1997), .59-70. See al.so Clark. Painting Chfirli's Haiidftaire, I5i, obsetTed, "Thai lbe eye of tbe city dweller is of Alodeni Life. chap. 2. overburdened with protective functions is obvious." 64. Parsons, "Repiitaiioii and Publi< .\p|)earance," 59-70. 44. On lhe.se points, see especially Gleber, .Iri I?/'/'^;fc(ji^'-rj Walk. 137, who 65. On this point, see t:iark. Painting oj Modern t.ij'r. 47-49. relaies jlarifrif to the realm of photography and film; Vanessa R. Sebwarti, "Cinematic Spectatorship bef()re the Apparatus; Tbe Public 66. See Siraus. "Upright Posiure.'" 175. who observes. "Conlidence and timidily, elation and depression, siabilitv and in.secnrityall are exTaste for Realiiy in iin-de-SiMe Paris." in Cinema and the Invention of piessed in gail." See also Marcel Maiiss, "Techniques of tbe liodv" i\lode>v t.ije. ed. Leo Chaniey and Schwartz (Berkeley; Universiiy of Cal(1934), in Inairjmrations. ed. Jonalban Craiy and Sanlord Kwiiuer (Newifornia Press. 1995). 297-319; and Friedberg. Window Shojijnng. See also York: Zone. 1992), 469, who sees styles ()f walking as "simultaneouslv a Fournel. Ce qv'on voil. 261. who referred lo the jlfinem as a "walking matter of race. oC individual mentality and of collective mentality." {iagiierreot\pe." 45. Gilbert. Walks in (he World. 31. 46. .See n. I above. 47. .See, for example. Herbert. Impressionism.'?i'r.and .-\uihea t]allen, 'the Sjiei taiiilar Body: Seienre. Method and Meaning in the Work of Degas (NewHaven: Yale University Press, l'.)9.">), 175. 48. rills outing exemplifies wbai Louis Iliiart's popular text tj' flaneur (Paris: .Anbert. 18.50) categori/ed as "Sunday y/cijji-nc" with the familv. Huart stte.ssed the actvi.sabiliiy ()r tlie jlaneitrs pniccediiig alone on weekdays, so as to give free rein to his wandering attention and to be able lo pursue"with the eye. noi wiili ihe foot"any w-omaii wbo at67. Here iny reading aligns with that of Fried, "Caillebotie's Impressionism," 26-27, who |ioints out ihe dominaul impression of temporal dtiration and sees in tbe umbrella-bearing figures a "mobile mode of absorptive closure . . . thai also allows for tbe sbaring or merging of individual lifeworids." 68. Eugene Minkowski. "Towaid a Psychopatliolog\' of Lived Space," in Lived Time: Phejiomenotngi/al and Psyihnpalhologirat Sludie\. tt-ans. Nancy Met/el (Evanston, III.; Northwestern University Press, 1970), 406-7. See also Meyer Schapiro. "The Social Bases of.-^rl," in Art in 'Ttteoiy. fMH)2(H)0: .An Anthology of Chanf^ug Idfas. ed. (Charles Hariison and Paul Wood (Maiden, Mas.s.: Blackwell, 2003), 5L'>, wbo remarks. ",\ ])rom-

THE .\KI tW WAI.KINi. IN L..^TK-NI N i-. I t.t N I H-C.ENURV I'ARI.S

687

enade . . . would be impossible without a particular grov\ih of urban life and secular forms of recrealion. The iiecessan meansthe streeLs and the roadsare also social and economic in origin, beyond or prior lo any individual: yet each man enjoys his walk by himself without any sense <if consiraint or instiititioiial purpo.se." 69. Straus, "Upright Posture," 179-80. 70. Claude Monet, quoted in Cliiisiof ,\sendorf, Batterifs oj Liff: On thf Itistoiy oj Things and their Perrejition in Modernity, irails. Don Reneau (Berkeley: IJniversity of California Press, 1993), 94. 71. Kepioductions of those paintings can be found in Tlu New Painting, 179; aod in John House, Monet: Nature into .\rl (New Haven; Vale Univej-siiy Press, 1986), 1.54. 72. Fiinice Lipton, Looking inio Degas: Uneas'^ Images of Women and Modern tJje (Berkeley; University of California Press. 1987). 12873. De (Vrieau. t^nrtiee oj Fveryday Life. 93. 97 (emphasis in the original). 74. A. R. Ammons. "A Poem Is a Walk," t':po,h 18. no. 1 ()9fi8); 117. In a similar vein, Benjamin, Charles Haudelaire. 98. compares Bau<ielaire's prosody lo "the map of a big city" whose linguistic efiecis are cak tilatefi "step by step." 75. De .\nii(is. "First Dav in Paris." 88"). 76. Ft-an7 Hessel. Sj/aueren in Berlin (1929). (|iioled in Gleber, .Art of Taking a Walk. 66. 77. |oliu O'.Neill. introdiiclion to Maurice Merleau-Ponty. the Prose nj the World, ed. Claude Letoit. trans. O'Neill (Fvanston. 111.; Northwestern University Press, 1973), xxxiii. 78. Sagraves, "Tbe Street." 90-91. makes this poini. Friedberg, Window Shojiping, 73, iioies that for both Benjamin and Hessel. "city streets served as a mnemonic sysiem. bringing images of the past into the present. . . ." 79. Bergson, Matter and Memory. I:'i253. See alsojay, Diminia.st /^Vs, 193. 80. Theodore RefT, Manel and Modtm Paris, exh. cat.. National Gallery of Arl, Wa.sbington, D.C.. 1982. 236. 240, states that tbe Fete de la Paix (l<)geiber with the 1878 Exposition Univeiselle that opened iwo months earlier) was understood as an afruinaiion ol tbe coiintiy's complete t-ecovei\ afier the Ftanco-Prussian War and ibe Commune and describe.s ihe one-legged man both as "an insignilicaiit genre . . . figure" and as "a reminder of tbe honors of the teceut war and of the civil war ihat followed it." A.sendoi1, Balterifs oj Liff, 78, contend.s that the painting offers confusing signs of failure; the streei here, witb its contrasting types of jjede.slrians. appears "not as a site of circulation but as a no-man's-land dividing two social spheres," and Manet in this wav "creates memot-y through pictorial slrucciire." 81. Regarding tbese chatacteristics of Manet, see Fried, Mavft's Modernism. 294-97. 82. Fdwaid Ri-lph. t'laie and Plaretessness (London; I'ion, 197r>). 40. 83. B e n j a m i n . Chaih's Haudelaire. 174. 8 4 . S i m m e l . " M e l r o p o l i s aii<i M e n i a l Life." 410. ( i e s c i i b e d lli.U iiipiil a.s " ( b e intiiisification of n e n o i i s stimiilati<in w b i c b lesiilis from t h e swifi

a n d I i n i n i e r r u p i e d c b a n g e of o u t e r a n d i n n e r stimuli," S e e also D e b o r a L. SiK'einiaii. Art Nouveau in Ein-ile-Sikle Frame: Politirs. PsMhotujry. and Style (Beikeley: University of California Press, 1989). 80-83, who notes ibat contemporary medical psyebologists blamed tbai oveistimiilaiion lor the rise in nenoiis ailments snllered by lbe population. 85. On this poini. see, for example, (iastoii Baclielaid. Fhf PoHi's oj Sjiace. trans. Maria Jolas (Boston; Beacon Press, 1969), 217-18; '"Outside and inside . . . are always ready lo be reversed, to exchange their hoslilily"; Rt4ph, Place and Placelessness. 39; Bej-gson. Matter and Memory. 55: and Situmel, "Metropolis and Mental Life." 419. 86. Meyer Schapiro, Impressionism: Rfjtfilions and Pncfjitions (New \'ork: Geot-ge Braziller, 1997), 38, 87. Fdgar Allan Poe, "Tbe Man of the Crowd" (1840). in C.reat 'Fales and Poems oj Edgar .Altan Pof (New Vork; Washington Square Press. 1951). Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire. 128. states that alllumgli Baudelaire equaled the man of the crowd witb lbe jlaneur. thi- man exbibits manic behavior, counter to tlie composure of tbe flaneur. 88. Baudelaire. Painter of Modein Life. 9. To indicate lbe jlaneurs comfort level in the siteets. he continued lbe domestic analogy: "To be away bom home and yel tf> feel oneseli evenwheie ai home. . . ." 89. Benjamin, Charles Baudetaire, 37. 90. Kent C. Bloomer and (Ibarles W. Moore. Bod\. Memoiy. and Aictiitetture (New Haven; Vale Universin' Press, 1977), ,38." 91. Foiniiel. Ce i/u'im vail. 263. 92. Bal/ac, .A Haitot High and t.ow. 34. His description was written before Paiis's remodeling, but even Haiissmaniiization could not suppress though it could relocalethe night culture of the city. 93. See Minkowski, "Psycliopathology of Lived Space," 427-29, who asseris thai darkness "loticbes the individual directly, envelops him. penetrates him, aiui even passes through liim"; bence, the ego "becomes one wilb it," See also Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Fhe Phenomenology oj Pncejituin. trans. C]olin Smith (New Vork; Humanities Press, 1962). 283; and Ri>ger Caillois, "Mimicry and Legendaiy Psycbasthenia." U-ans. [olm .Sliiplev, Octolx'Y. no. 31 (Winter 1984); 3(). 94. Micbael F. Zimmermann, Sevrat and ttif An 'I'heory of His 'Fime, trans. Patricia Ckiniplon (."Antwerp; Fonds Mercator, 1991), 12832. repniduces a number of those drawings. Night Stroll v/ns reproduced in MinolaiireX no. 11 (1938); 8. 95. Blanc, An in Ornament and tiress. 27:V74. 96. Beaumont Newhall, 'I'he History oj Photography (New York: Museum ot Modern .-\rt, 1982), 16, cites as an example Loiiis-Jacqiies-Mande Dagiierte's 1838 Vino oj the Boulnuird du 'temj>le. whicb, because it could record only lbe pre.sence of stationan' figures, offered a deceptively empty view of a boulevard "coustantlv filled wiib ibe moving thrfing of pedestrians and carriages." 97. Holmes. "Human Wiieel." 571. noted thai the camera made \isiblc positions so uiiexpeiied that he ventured, "No ariisi would have dared to draw a walking figuie in atliunles like some of these."