Modernité and its mythology

Abstract

Too often, the term of modernité is used without a clear sense when historians write about the modernité of the greats painters of the nineteenth century, as Édouard Manet or Vincent van Gogh for example. This article wants to give a definition of modernité as Baudelaire thought it, i.e. a concept, then show that our vision of this term is constructed from the discourse of the art critics of the nineteenth century. In fact, what we call today modernité is only a mythology.