Ennuyeuse

Matthew Guerrieri was writing about the reasons for the relative popularity of avant-garde painting over avant-garde music. It seems an interesting essay that I'll finish later because that's not the point right now.

Near the beginning he quotes fellow art critic Charles Baudelaire (i.e., the Baudelaire) on the superiority of painting to sculpture. Again, it's interesting but all I'm after here is this bit:

Baudelaire made his initial splash as an art critic; in a long essay reviewing the Paris Salon of 1846, he rather infamously included a section explaining "Pourquoi la sculpture est ennuyeuse"—why sculpture is boring.

[Matthew Guerrieri, "Thermostat", Soho the Dog, 19 August 2008.]

"Ennuyeuse"! What a lovely and useful word.

This may become my new favorite French word, although it does have to compete with grenouille, which was my French teacher's favorite decades ago, and floconeuse, which we saw a few years ago on the bilingual packaging for an ice-crushing machine. They're both terrifically fun to pronounce, but ennuyeuse also seems eminently useful.

Posted on August 21, 2008 at 17.22 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Briefly Noted, Such Language!

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