LLEI D'ART 10

The Myth of the Bohemian Although the concept flits between romanticism and realism, between realism and legend, it is certainly the re- evaluation of the artist’s creative freedom that defines the essence of the bohemian, even in detriment to its socio- economic positioning. The image of the erratic, cursed artist, marginalised and a recluse, a failure in the eyes of society has been a fount of inspiration for painters, writers and scriptwriters that have given into the temptation to tell, in very different ways, the stories of tortured, yet gifted young men and women who lack recognition and walk paths of loneliness and incomprehension. Our collective imaginary is bursting with stories that link disparate, vagabond lives, free of rules of bourgeois conventions, free spirits, suffering souls that frequent taverns and bordellos. The bohemian is considered a privileged figure that, through his own existence, represents an extract of the most sublime qualities that artistic creation should bring together. An example is Modigliani, a paradigm of depravity and the calamity of an early, if foretold, death, which put an end to the suffering of the last of the painters identified with the so- called Parisian bohemia of the 19 th century. This unique stage marked by the sublime and the dramatic has been the source of inspiration for many other artists that have felt irresistibly drawn to the enchantment of an apparently disordered life at the edge of any conventional social archetype, as was the case with the Spanish artists Santiago Rusiñol or Ramón Casas, who shared a kind of bohemian atmosphere in Barcelona’s famous Els Quatre Gats café, the spiritual home of the Catalan Modernista spirit and the avant-gardes: it was a place where talks and literary evenings where held, as well as exhibitions and art meetings, recreating the atmosphere of the peerless Montmartre cabaret Le Chat Noir . Carl Spitzweg. Poeta pobre/ Unfortunate poet , 1835. Neuepinakothek, Munich. Jules Blin. ¡Arte, miseria, desesperación, locura!/ Art, misery, desperation, dementia! , 1880. Museo de Bellas Artes de Dijon. Donación Granville/ Donation . © François Jay. Adolf Hohenstein. La Bohême, 1895-1896 © The Morgan Library & Museum, Nueva York James Fuld Collection 125