The Bohemia
Stories
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What is the Bohemia?
In the history of art, bohemia is the world of the bohemian, a certain way of life.
Who are the bohemians, then?
Originally, “bohemian” was a pejorative term given to the gipsy. In the 19th century in Paris, there were many gypsies coming from the region of the Bohemia (today’s Czech Republic).
Some people despised that gypsy life. Others considered it as a free life without ties, without rules regulating the false, hypocritical order, or at least the false morals of society.
Around half the 19th century, when art started to change and modernity started to arise, when the artist stopped “reproducing skillfully” to turn into a true artist and express what they felt and their individuality, when their creativity and freedom were valued, it was also when that “free” way of life that the gypsy symbolized started to be valued.
Obviously, artists and intellectuals whose lives have the “romantic” characteristics of the gypsy life are called “bohemian.” Lives apart from social conventions independent, wandering, with a different scale of values than those of the middle class.
All things considered, the image of “what an artist should be” is what prevails. It is how we imagine artists as from a century and a half or today, although an artist is not necessarily that way or “should be that way”: a person with a disorganized, marginal and “misunderstood” life, for whom freedom, individuality and “authenticity” are above any material issue.
Image: Chaim Soutine (1917). Amedeo Modigliani.
Recommended links:
Stories behind the Works of Art: Monet and the Rouen Cathedral.
Stories Behind Works of Art: Ulysses and the Sirens, John William Waterhouse.
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso.
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