He sees beauty and modernity as intertwined, defining beauty as "made up of an eternal, invariable element…and of a relative circumstantial element." The salient quality of The Painter of Modern Life is what and whom Guys, the grown man, found interesting. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The … The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (Arts & Letters) [Baudelaire, Charles] on Amazon.com. First, there is the dandy. In his essay The Painter of Modern Life, Charles Baudelaire defines modernity by examining the interrelations of beauty, fashion, and lifestyle through the eyes of an artist. “Modern Life,” for Baudelaire, appeared to be located among la bohème, which, in itself, was a creation of the modern world.