“Se fouler la rate pour si peu”: Baudelaire’s génie and the (De)Formation of Taste in the 1846 and 1859 Salons

Abstract: This article traces the evolution of Baudelaire’s conception of genius in his criticism. Situating Baudelaire’s aesthetics within contemporary political thought, it argues that Baudelaire’s views on artistic merit were sensitive to shifts in France’s socio-economic makeup, as well as to the failures of meritocracy as a justification for inequality. Both shifts and failures produced, in his eyes, a severe crisis of taste. Baudelaire’s notion of genius hence emerges as a compensatory fiction that seeks to address this crisis by bridging the gap between monetary and artistic value while reconciling the desire for order and hierarchy with the valorization of individuality.