Dandys, esthètes et névropathes: Drogués dart dans le sillage de Baudelaire (1880-1900)

The late-nineteenth century dandy is, by his own avowal, a cliché blending different influences, amongst which Baudelaire might be seen as a determinant character in building up the aesthete’s identity. As a means of healing or of self-destruction, drugs appear not only as another accessory in the dandy's panoply, but as a path to reach the hidden side of the self. Through painting as much as through writing, artists such as Jean Lorrain and Jeanne Jacquemin struggle to define the dreams and nightmares they fear and yearn for and, above all, yearn to draw the picture of what they fail to know in themselves. Moreover, through the Idealist and Symbolist movements, this addictive artistic struggle to define the unknown tries to give shape, through a renewed language, to shapeless and immaterial thoughts and fantasies, thus announcing the experimental creativity of Surrealism.