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Gawkers: Art and Audience in Late Nineteenth-Century France

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Bridget Alsdorf explores how artists and writers in late nineteenth-century Paris represented the seductions, horrors, and banalities of street life through the eyes of curious viewers known as Gawkers.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 22, 2024

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This video video discusses a new book that explores the concept of "gawkers," derived from earlier research on crowd dynamics in 19th-century French painting. The author explains how this book transitioned from focusing on crowds and their psychology to examining the role of gawkers as a social phenomenon in art. Gawkers are characterized as passive observers who are visually engaged but lack individual agency, often captured in public scenes by artists like Félix Vallotton. The term "gawkers" refers to individuals drawn by a mix of curiosity and fascination, prevalent in literature and art during the late 19th century, particularly in Paris, coinciding with an increase in urban spectacles. The author highlights how visual art is uniquely suited to portray these characters and their complex social dynamics. Through various chapters, the book analyzes the behavior of gawkers in different contexts, such as accidents, theater audiences, and street scenes, illustrating broader socio-cultural themes. The author emphasizes the ethical implications of passive observation, comparing artists’ responsibilities to attract audiences amid changing artistic and commercial landscapes. There is a reflection on contemporary society, suggesting that current "Gawker culture"—exemplified by live-streaming events—continues to resonate with historic artistic themes. The author advocates for further exploration of these themes, revealing how the past informs present behavior and attitudes toward observation in public spaces. Overall, the book seeks to shed light on the cultural significance of gawkers and their representation in art, highlighting their relevance and complexity in modern urban life.

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This book really grew naturally out of a previous book

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that I'd written on the problem

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of the group in 19th century French painting.

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And that that book was really about

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how painters explored group dynamics,

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how they painted tensions between the collectivity

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and solidarity of a group versus artistic individualism.

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And, and so while I was working on groups

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and group psychology as a subject for art,

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I became interested in the point at which a group becomes a

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crowd,

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and how the social, social psychology of crowds is distinct,

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especially since crowds are generally public phenomena.

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Uh, they're, they're porous,

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they're amorphous, they're contagious.

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Uh, they're not as defined or exclusive as groups.

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So this book on Gawkers really started

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as a book about crowds, and,

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and crowd psychology as this powerful subject for art.

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Uh, and crowd Psychology was a branch of social psychology,

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in theory that was largely invented

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in the late 19th century.

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Uh, and, and many of its key practitioners

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were, working in France.

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So I started by, by studying the proliferation

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of crowd scenes, in late 19th century French art,

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and in particular, the ways that art can capture,

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crowd psychology and behavior in ways

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that are very much unique to visual media.

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Uh, and that's still an important facet of the book.

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But as my research developed

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and accumulated this figure of, the Gawker kept popping up,

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in, in artworks and in texts,

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and at a certain point, I realized that this was what many

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of these artists working in 19th century Paris were circling

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around and, and worrying about.

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And so that this was really what the book had

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to, had to be about.

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So, so who, who are these gawkers?

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Uh, well, the, the term in French is Bado,

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and I decided that gawkers is the best English translation

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because it, approximates the, the French words, idea

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of a kind of unselfconscious curiosity,

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a a wrapped fascination.

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Um, and, and also the idea of a kind

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of compulsive attraction to some,

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and this, this term dates back centuries.

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It goes back to the 16th century.

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Uh, but it proliferates just,

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it exponentially increases in the language in the 19th

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century, and it peaks between 1880

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and 1910, which is also the moment when scenes of crowds

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and gawkers proliferate in, in French art.

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And so I really just stumbled upon these gawkers in my,

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in my research, because they're creatures of crowds.

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Uh, they accumulate

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and they build on each other in public space.

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Uh, they're most essential characteristics are

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that they are passive.

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They are a passive audience,

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and they are fundamentally visual, in their,

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their relationship to the world.

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So they, they approach the city as a kind of theater

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of things to see, they are impressionable,

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they're distractible, they're collective and,

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and other directed rather than, individual

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and self-possessed.

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Uh, and in extreme cases, they're, they're seized by a kind

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of, aesthetic and ethical paralysis.

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So this is a state that's temporary,

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but it's also very strong.

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Uh, and, and artists and writers in 19th century France

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were, were fascinated by them,

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but they were also very anxious about them as an audience

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that they had to attract.

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So this shift from, from crowds

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to Gawkers was a really exciting shift in my research,

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because it opened up a new way of thinking about,

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crowds in modern art,

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and also a new framework

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for thinking about the modern urban subject.

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And, and it wasn't, a discovery

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because these gawkers had, had really been there all along.

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They were kind of hiding in plain sight,

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but it felt like a discovery

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because they had received so little, attention.

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Uh, they're not just all over the art in

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late 19th century France.

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They're also in, in literature, journalism,

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cultural commentary,

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and they're, they're presented in this literature

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as the kind of, embarrassing cousin of the flanner.

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This, this figure of the flanner, of course, being the,

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the kind of sophisticated sidewalk stroller, observer,

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interpreter of the city who's generally classified in the

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19th century as as intelligent as af and male,

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and Gawkers, in contrast can be anyone.

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They can be men, women, children, any class native Parisians

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or outsiders of various kinds.

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Uh, so there's this rich

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and expansive discourse around them, in addition

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to all the works of art that hinge on them.

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But scholars of 19th century France have

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largely ignored them.

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Um, so key to my intervention is just to call attention

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to their cultural importance.

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Uh, and as an artist historian, I'm also really arguing

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that it's visual art that best captures the power

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and significance of these gawkers,

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because they are fundamentally visual creatures.

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They stop and stare at something visually arresting.

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They're aesthetically driven.

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So art is really best suited

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to capture who and what they are.

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I talk about a broad range of artists in the book, painters,

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print makers, filmmakers, some of whom are quite famous,

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some less so,

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but Felix Ton is really the book's beating heart.

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Uh, he's the artist who appears, again and again,

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and he's the artist who inspired many of the book's,

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most fundamental questions about the ethics of looking.

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He's also the artist who's most visibly,

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worried about the relationship

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between Gawing and looking at art.

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Um, so he's fascinated by Gawkers as a social phenomenon

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with deep relevance to the art world.

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Uh, and he shows gawkers again

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and again in his, his paintings, his woodcuts

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and his lithographs.

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Some of these were sold as fine art.

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Some of them were reproduced for the masses in,

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newspapers and magazines.

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He also wrote novels, one of which,

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I examine at length in the book,

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because the, the ethics of looking and,

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and passively standing by drives the plot.

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Uh, and he really becomes known in the 1890s

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for his crowd scenes.

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And his crowd scenes are just flush with gawkers

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of all different kinds, looking at all different things.

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So a traffic accident, street entertainers,

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a brawl in a cafe, a a

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Suicide in the river, send, a public execution

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of an anarchist funeral procession, theatrical performances.

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Um, he also shows gawkers in commercial settings,

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so gathering around, advertising posters

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or shop windows, or department stores.

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Uh, and he also, tries to show the way

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that gawing also involves the uncomfortable exposure

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of people's intimate private lives to public view, to,

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to public commentary and gossip.

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Uh, and he connects that kind of exposure to the,

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consumerism of the department store in a particularly

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remarkable painting titled The Bon Marche.

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And this is a, a large, ambitious triptych

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that he paints in 1898.

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And it shows the interior

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of the famous Parisian department store, Labon Marche.

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And, and the central panel of this triptych shows a a crowd

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of people streaming down, the big central staircase

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of the store, the store that was called, the Cathedral

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of Commerce by the novelist Il Zola.

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And they're surrounded by these glamorous displays of,

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of merchandise, these displays that were designed to,

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to captivate, to immobilize and seduce shoppers,

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and flanking the central panel of the crowd.

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There's, two side panels that show on the one side,

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a a cluster of women who are looking at various

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items for sale.

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And on the other side, a singular, elegant woman,

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another shopper having this strikingly intimate moment,

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with a flirtatious salesman

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or a floor walker, as they were, called.

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And he's, he's showing her some lipstick so

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that the iconography is very

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suggestive with these lipsticks.

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Uh, so the triptych is basically linking the, the gawking

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of the crowd at the spectacle of all of these luxury goods,

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to the public's hunger,

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to gawk at other people's moral transgressions,

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which included sexual transgressions

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and also kind of financial falls from grace.

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Uh, and these two things really drive the plots of

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so many 19th century French novels.

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And, and Ton is linking them to the crowds

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that sought out such spectacles.

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Um, and he, he really understood that he, as an artist,

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was under pressure to give his audience the audience

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of his art, the kind of salacious, sensational, you know,

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flashy, seductive, subject matter that they wanted.

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So he shows the Gawing crowd as, as a social fact,

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something we're all a part of, but also as, as a problem.

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It's, it's a social problem

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and an aesthetic problem, a, a problem for art.

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The chapter, that I title accident focuses on

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artistic representations of crowds

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and gawkers that are spontaneously gathered

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around accidents in the street.

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Uh, many of these accidents are scenes of injury

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and, even death.

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So they're, they're quite dramatic and, and charged.

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Uh, and key to what fascinated artists about these kinds

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of scenes, many of them are vehicular collisions,

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crime scenes, things of that nature was the way

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that they exposed the ethical dilemmas

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of navigating urban streets.

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If, if you're walking down the street

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and your attention is captured by an, an accident,

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is it ethically defensible to simply stop and stare?

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Should, should you keep moving or should you intervene?

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What are the ethics of this situation that is,

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accidental on your part of happening upon this accidentally,

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in addition to the accident that you're witness missing?

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So, what kind of social responsibility do we have for things

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that we accidentally see?

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Uh, artists were very interested in these fundamentally

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philosophical questions, in part

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because those dilemmas were also central to

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what they were doing, picturing these happenings in art.

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And they were often inspired by events in the news.

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Uh, they were observers of urban life.

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They were walking the streets looking for inspiration.

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They were looking for striking scenes,

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seeking out provocative social situations

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that could make a stunning picture.

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So the, the ethics of vision

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and of art as a visual medium is really central

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to this, chapter.

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And, and that unfolds, the ethics of,

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of artisan audiences alike.

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So central to the, idea of gawking

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as a behavior is the idea that the street is a, a kind

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of theater, a kind of open air theater of things to see.

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And, but it's not, it's not theater, of course.

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It's a, it's an unfolding social reality

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with real social and ethical stakes.

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So in the chapter titled, audience, I focus on,

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paintings and prints of theater audiences,

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actual theater audiences in the theater.

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Uh, because this genre is the model for many

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of the street scenes featuring Gawkers in the rest

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of the book, there's a long tradition,

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of depicting theater audiences in art as a kind of metaphor

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for the crowd, for a broader social reality.

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And the artists that I treat throughout the book often

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linked their gawkers in the street to

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audiences in the theater, and to audiences

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that they were trying to attract with their art.

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Uh, and writers likewise look to theatrical audiences

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as a metaphor for their, their publics writers, like,

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G***o Paol and Stefan Mahler,

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me write about theater audiences with the language

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of an emergent crowd psychology that's,

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that's coming into being in the 1870s, eighties,

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and nineties, as a way of theorizing and,

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and potentially controlling the unpredictable and,

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and contagious behavior of crowds.

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So artists like, Domer Ton Dega

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and several others, they depict theater audiences as a way

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of exploring the social dynamics of, of crowds in general,

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but also of their own audiences in particular.

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Uh, they were very conscious of, the audiences

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that exerted pressure on their creativity, on their careers.

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Uh, that pressure was the press. It was public opinion.

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It was market forces of supply and demand in the art world.

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So these theater scenes were a way to comment on

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that essentially theatrical condition of, of urban life,

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but also of the artist's career.

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In the chapter on street theater,

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I moved back out into the streets, to look at paintings,

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prints, and, and also some silent films

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that stretch the idea of everyday life as a theater.

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So instead of scenes of, of accidents, injury and, and,

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and death that are most immediately associated with Gawkers,

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I focus here on works that capture different kinds of,

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of gawking, for example, the more, labinal

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and often more subtle gawking

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of a man trailing a beautiful woman in the street.

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Uh, Pierre Bonnar loves this theme.

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He treats it again and again in his early work,

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in that he did in Paris.

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And in the same years that Bonnar is making his paintings

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and prints capturing these charged urban encounters

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in the Parisian streets.

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Uh, the filmmakers, August

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and Louis Lumiere were making some of the very first films,

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many of which focused on the behavior of urban crowds.

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And, and in their case, the gawking that they capture

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in their films is the kind of gawing

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that happens when people encounter the spectacle

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of a film being made.

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So you have these remarkably self-reflexive films

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that are ostensibly about capturing the ebb and flow

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and diversity of crowds in the street,

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but they end up focusing most on the gawing

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that the film itself in its making cannot help but attract.

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So people will come right up to the lens, stare into it,

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or they might turn and look as they pass the camera kind

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of breaking that fourth wall.

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Uh, and this reminds us when we're watching the film

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that we are gawkers too on the other side of the screen,

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that the, the, the film is kind

13:23.325 --> 13:24.485
of putting us in that position.

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Uh, and the two key questions that this chapter raises is

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how do the audiences of,

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commercialized entertainment compare

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to the audiences of art?

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Uh, and how can an artist possibly compete

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with commercial entertainments when trying

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to attract an audience?

13:41.945 --> 13:45.725
So in the chapter that I call attraction, I focus on this,

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this problem of commercial art for late 19th century artists

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by, by looking at artworks in which advertisement is

13:52.005 --> 13:53.085
a central theme.

13:53.265 --> 13:55.365
So, and I call this chapter attraction

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because the power of visual art to attract the viewer

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and the consumer is really central to what's at stake

14:00.965 --> 14:03.285
for these artists navigating,

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their careers in a period when the line between fine art

14:06.625 --> 14:09.485
and commercial art was increasingly blurred.

14:09.505 --> 14:11.765
Uh, this was the era of,

14:11.905 --> 14:14.405
the full color lithographic poster when that, when

14:14.405 --> 14:17.605
that emerges and is elevated into an art form by,

14:17.805 --> 14:20.285
OUS Trek, Bonna Ton and others.

14:20.775 --> 14:23.045
These are artists who thought of themselves primarily

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as painters,

14:24.425 --> 14:27.245
but who regularly did commercial work for hire as well.

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They did a lot of work for advertising, for companies.

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So they worked in a range of media and,

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and they thought a great deal about the different audiences

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that each medium presupposed and, and had to attract.

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And you can see them thinking across these media

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and across these different audiences when, for example,

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Bonar makes a painting of someone stopped in his tracks

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by posters plastered in the street,

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or, paintings, that ton did

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of people staring into shop windows on the sidewalk,

14:57.505 --> 15:01.125
or, paintings that Tuus Lare did of people gawing at,

15:01.125 --> 15:02.285
at CanCan dancers.

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They also made art that commented on the power

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of celebrities, and especially celebrity scandals,

15:09.025 --> 15:10.685
to attract an audience.

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And, and in all of these works, artistic hierarchies of,

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paintings versus prints versus posters versus commercial

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displays,

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and also hierarchies of, of artists versus

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cultivated viewers versus a kind of mass audience.

15:27.345 --> 15:29.845
Uh, all of these are, are thrown into question,

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and I hope that they're as sucked into these works as I was,

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I I was really initially just very sucked into these late

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19th century representations of, of gawkers and, and crowds

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because of the way that they articulated

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crowd psychology in visual form, in ways

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that are aesthetically captivating,

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but also strikingly different in their

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philosophical substance from the crowd.

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Psychologists who were writing at the time

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and who have gotten more attention as the kind of theorists

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of crowds, and I particularly value, came

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to value over the course of working on the book, the way

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that these artworks are so layered and,

16:06.105 --> 16:10.125
and sociologically complex without the artists ever,

16:10.125 --> 16:12.445
looking down their nose at their subjects.

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And that's because these artists understood that,

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that they were Gawker too,

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that passive looking, wrapped looking.

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That's what artists made of. Right.

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And passive looking is also what art asks us

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as arts viewers to do.

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Uh, and this kind of passive looking can be very

16:28.805 --> 16:32.565
pleasurable, but it can also be dangerous in ethical

16:32.745 --> 16:34.565
and social sociopolitical terms.

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Uh, what happens to the social contract when the crowd

16:38.395 --> 16:40.565
sees the street as an open air theater?

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So, so when these artists expose and,

16:43.645 --> 16:46.405
and scrutinize gawking as a behavior that's,

16:46.505 --> 16:47.845
that's ethically fraught

16:47.865 --> 16:52.085
or as, potentially compromising to the integrity of art,

16:52.465 --> 16:54.605
they're also casting suspicion on

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themselves and, and on us.

16:56.945 --> 17:00.485
Uh, and it's, it's this simultaneously, skeptical and,

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and empathetic way in which they represent these gawkers

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as a phenomenon, a pervasive phenomenon

17:06.765 --> 17:08.325
of modern urban life,

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that I particularly appreciate and want.

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I I really want that message to come across,

17:14.255 --> 17:15.525
especially since they do this

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with such ingeniously self-reflexive,

17:18.325 --> 17:20.405
visually captivating aesthetic strategies.

17:20.405 --> 17:22.565
And, and this is a kind of critical aesthetics

17:22.875 --> 17:25.525
that I think we could all use, use more of,

17:25.865 --> 17:29.645
but perhaps an even more basic, takeaway of the book is,

17:29.705 --> 17:33.485
is simply its historical excavation of, of the Gawker,

17:33.485 --> 17:36.805
the barau as a, as a subject of, of major fascination for,

17:37.345 --> 17:40.725
for artisan writers at a moment when modern urban life,

17:40.745 --> 17:43.525
as we know, it was still emergent, still taking shape.

17:43.985 --> 17:45.485
And key to that phenomenon

17:45.505 --> 17:47.845
as these artisan writers represented, is just

17:47.845 --> 17:50.565
that the openness of the category,

17:50.565 --> 17:52.725
that it really can be anyone,

17:52.795 --> 17:54.645
even a flanner can be a bado

17:54.645 --> 17:57.125
because it's, it's not an identity or a social type.

17:57.155 --> 17:59.045
It's a state that anyone can slip in

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and out of all of us do it.

18:00.865 --> 18:03.365
No one's immune. Uh, and this isn't all bad.

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Uh, gawking is deeply human.

18:06.315 --> 18:08.485
It's, it's a manifestation of the power.

18:08.485 --> 18:11.685
Other people have to direct our attention, our,

18:11.705 --> 18:13.045
our minds, our emotions.

18:13.505 --> 18:16.765
Uh, children do it more shamelessly than anyone and,

18:16.765 --> 18:17.765
and quite innocently.

18:18.305 --> 18:20.485
So in late 19th century France, it's,

18:20.485 --> 18:22.685
it's theorized not just in writing, but also,

18:22.865 --> 18:25.805
and especially ingeniously in visual art.

18:26.385 --> 18:27.965
Uh, and the last thing I would say,

18:27.965 --> 18:30.285
and this is something that I don't say explicitly in the

18:30.285 --> 18:32.605
book, but I think it's it's very much implicit and,

18:32.625 --> 18:36.005
and important, is that I think gawing is a way of looking

18:36.305 --> 18:39.645
and behaving is very useful for us to study now,

18:39.695 --> 18:41.485
think about now, given the,

18:41.545 --> 18:43.205
the Gawker culture in which we live.

18:43.785 --> 18:46.205
Uh, and I could give, you know, various examples of

18:46.205 --> 18:47.565
what I mean by Gawker culture.

18:47.705 --> 18:49.205
But I think the, the clearest

18:49.205 --> 18:51.725
and most disturbing to me, is, you know,

18:51.725 --> 18:55.965
people live streaming, violent altercations, accidents,

18:56.245 --> 18:58.525
tragedies, or even just other people's outlandish

18:58.725 --> 18:59.965
behavior with their phones.

19:00.315 --> 19:04.165
This is a, a theatricalizing impulse that's everywhere,

19:04.185 --> 19:06.605
and that has proliferated exponentially with,

19:06.605 --> 19:10.365
with smartphones and social media, that oblique passive view

19:10.625 --> 19:13.285
of something that you happen upon in the street just

19:13.435 --> 19:14.685
broadcast to the world.

19:14.905 --> 19:17.885
But this has a history, it has a quite deep history, and,

19:17.945 --> 19:19.965
and new technology might give it new forms.

19:20.305 --> 19:23.965
Of course, they might amplify, its potential harms,

19:24.025 --> 19:25.725
but the behavior isn't new.

19:25.725 --> 19:27.565
It, it has a historical lineage,

19:27.825 --> 19:31.525
it has a theoretical lineage, and some very clever and

19:31.545 --> 19:34.925
and talented, artists, well over a hundred years ago,

19:35.275 --> 19:36.925
have a lot to say about it.

19:36.985 --> 19:39.405
If we take the time to stop and, and look at their work.

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