DOI issue:
Nr. 2
DOI article:Murawska-Muthesius, Katarzyna: Bohemianism outside Paris: Central Europe and beyond
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51715#0099
potential bourgeois audiences, focusing his art and
writings on the painful impact of modernity on the
stratified social dynamici of his Czech Heimat.
György Szücs takes us into Hungary, and intro-
duces the first Hungarian artists’ colony, a “plein air
camp” in Nagybánya (today Baia Roma in Romania),
which was established by István Réti in 1896. Dem-
onstrating cogently the Strong French inspirations
of the Hungarian bohemians, who were studying
in the Academy Julian in Paris, and considered
Murger’s Scenes de la vie de bohème as their “Bible”,
Szücs’s text bears also testimony to the enduring
importance of Munich for the region. Half-way to
Paris, what Munich was offering to adepts, Hocking
in from the provinces, was not just the opportunity
to learn the tricks of the painter’s trade, but also to
encounter the newest French fashions, as well as to
learn the new codes and lifestyles of the bohemian
artist. Szücs’s emphasis on the social potential of
ephemeral caricatures, drawn at the coffee-tables
in Munich’s Café Lohengrin and Budapest’s Café
Japan, consolidating transnational communities of
artists, finds interesting parallels in other texts in
this volume: in Prahl’s discussion of the liberating
force of caricatures, which were produced by artists
meeting at the Lorenz Café in Prague, as well as in
Kozakowska-Zaucha’s article on Krakow and in mine
°n Warsaw, both stressing the importance of the
medium of caricature, executed on all possible sur-
faces, as critical for the status and the notion of the
exceptionality of the artist. Finally, Szücs’s emphasis
°n a synaesthetic relationship between Gypsy music
and painting ties in with the argument proposed by
Campbell Ewing.
My own text goes back in time to the period
around mid-nineteenth Century and relocates the
arena of bohemianism to Warsaw, at that time in the
grip of persécution by the Tsarist apparatus. It com-
pares two artistic communities, which were dubbed
as bohemian by later critics, a coterie of poets and a
group of visual artists, looking at the political aspects
°f bohemianism in the city deprived of political
autonomy. It focuses on the striking collection of
drawings, caricatures and photographs preserved
m private albums, and it argues that they provide a
unique insight into the multiple ways in which artists
sought to establish their professional Identities, and
a range of positions vis-à-vis other social groups at
the time of the major socio-cultural transition from
the noble to bourgeois patronage and during the for-
mation of Warsaw’s urban intelligentsia. If the mid-
-nineteenth-century “bohemian” artists in Warsaw
could not yet be counted as full-blown modernists,
the encounter between bohemianism and modern
art in Polish lands took place in Krakow which, as
argued by Ula Kozakowska-Zaucha, held a privileged
position among the bohemian capitals of fin-de-siecle
Europe. Having undergone a miraculous transforma-
tion from a provincial town on the outskirts of the
Austrian Empire, the end-of-the-nineteenth-century
Krakow turned into a ravishing artistic capital of the
partitioned Poland, in which many major cultural
posts were held by the self-conscious bohemians
and the self-declared décadent modernists, such as
Stanislaw Przybyszewski, the editor of the major cul-
tural journal Žycie. Kozakowska-Zaucha, presenting
the city’s major bohemian venues and cafés, empha-
sises the specificity of Krakow’s bohemianism which,
belonging to the mainstream of Polish Art Nouveau,
enjoyed both noble and bourgeois patronage, and,
let us add, forcefully advocated the autonomy art,
liberating it from any political imperatives.
Marc Smith’s text, finally, by taking us out of
Europe to America, provides yet another perspective
on the geography of bohemianism, which flour-
ished in New York from 1860s to 1890s. Imported
from Paris by expatriate American artists, it found
a fertile ground in New York, the artistic capital of
the United States, due to the similarity of socio-
-economic conditions: an expanding population
of writers and artists, a compétitive art market and
the resulting poverty of many young artists. Smith
traces the conflicting réputation of bohemianism
represented through novels (such as George Du
Maurier’s Trilby) and the booming bohemian imagery
in the American press, where its condemnation as a
world of vice and deprivation was accompanied by
its identification with radicalism, independence and
creativity. Paradoxically, in spite of the geographical
distance, and the seemingly different social and éco-
nomie circumstances in New York and the Central
European capitals, there are many parallels. Smith’s
text brings attention to the issues rarely discussed
in the context of French bohemianism, such as the
perceived overlap between bohemianism and Orien-
talism. His emphasis on the crafty and performative
91
writings on the painful impact of modernity on the
stratified social dynamici of his Czech Heimat.
György Szücs takes us into Hungary, and intro-
duces the first Hungarian artists’ colony, a “plein air
camp” in Nagybánya (today Baia Roma in Romania),
which was established by István Réti in 1896. Dem-
onstrating cogently the Strong French inspirations
of the Hungarian bohemians, who were studying
in the Academy Julian in Paris, and considered
Murger’s Scenes de la vie de bohème as their “Bible”,
Szücs’s text bears also testimony to the enduring
importance of Munich for the region. Half-way to
Paris, what Munich was offering to adepts, Hocking
in from the provinces, was not just the opportunity
to learn the tricks of the painter’s trade, but also to
encounter the newest French fashions, as well as to
learn the new codes and lifestyles of the bohemian
artist. Szücs’s emphasis on the social potential of
ephemeral caricatures, drawn at the coffee-tables
in Munich’s Café Lohengrin and Budapest’s Café
Japan, consolidating transnational communities of
artists, finds interesting parallels in other texts in
this volume: in Prahl’s discussion of the liberating
force of caricatures, which were produced by artists
meeting at the Lorenz Café in Prague, as well as in
Kozakowska-Zaucha’s article on Krakow and in mine
°n Warsaw, both stressing the importance of the
medium of caricature, executed on all possible sur-
faces, as critical for the status and the notion of the
exceptionality of the artist. Finally, Szücs’s emphasis
°n a synaesthetic relationship between Gypsy music
and painting ties in with the argument proposed by
Campbell Ewing.
My own text goes back in time to the period
around mid-nineteenth Century and relocates the
arena of bohemianism to Warsaw, at that time in the
grip of persécution by the Tsarist apparatus. It com-
pares two artistic communities, which were dubbed
as bohemian by later critics, a coterie of poets and a
group of visual artists, looking at the political aspects
°f bohemianism in the city deprived of political
autonomy. It focuses on the striking collection of
drawings, caricatures and photographs preserved
m private albums, and it argues that they provide a
unique insight into the multiple ways in which artists
sought to establish their professional Identities, and
a range of positions vis-à-vis other social groups at
the time of the major socio-cultural transition from
the noble to bourgeois patronage and during the for-
mation of Warsaw’s urban intelligentsia. If the mid-
-nineteenth-century “bohemian” artists in Warsaw
could not yet be counted as full-blown modernists,
the encounter between bohemianism and modern
art in Polish lands took place in Krakow which, as
argued by Ula Kozakowska-Zaucha, held a privileged
position among the bohemian capitals of fin-de-siecle
Europe. Having undergone a miraculous transforma-
tion from a provincial town on the outskirts of the
Austrian Empire, the end-of-the-nineteenth-century
Krakow turned into a ravishing artistic capital of the
partitioned Poland, in which many major cultural
posts were held by the self-conscious bohemians
and the self-declared décadent modernists, such as
Stanislaw Przybyszewski, the editor of the major cul-
tural journal Žycie. Kozakowska-Zaucha, presenting
the city’s major bohemian venues and cafés, empha-
sises the specificity of Krakow’s bohemianism which,
belonging to the mainstream of Polish Art Nouveau,
enjoyed both noble and bourgeois patronage, and,
let us add, forcefully advocated the autonomy art,
liberating it from any political imperatives.
Marc Smith’s text, finally, by taking us out of
Europe to America, provides yet another perspective
on the geography of bohemianism, which flour-
ished in New York from 1860s to 1890s. Imported
from Paris by expatriate American artists, it found
a fertile ground in New York, the artistic capital of
the United States, due to the similarity of socio-
-economic conditions: an expanding population
of writers and artists, a compétitive art market and
the resulting poverty of many young artists. Smith
traces the conflicting réputation of bohemianism
represented through novels (such as George Du
Maurier’s Trilby) and the booming bohemian imagery
in the American press, where its condemnation as a
world of vice and deprivation was accompanied by
its identification with radicalism, independence and
creativity. Paradoxically, in spite of the geographical
distance, and the seemingly different social and éco-
nomie circumstances in New York and the Central
European capitals, there are many parallels. Smith’s
text brings attention to the issues rarely discussed
in the context of French bohemianism, such as the
perceived overlap between bohemianism and Orien-
talism. His emphasis on the crafty and performative
91