Bohemians - Hardcover

Wilson

3.73

67 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813528941 ISBN 13: 9780813528946

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2000

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Since the early nineteenth century, the bohemian has been the protagonist of the story the West has wanted to hear about its artists-a story of genius, glamour, and doom. The bohemian takes on many guises: the artist dying in poverty like Modigliani or an outrageous entertainer like Josephine Baker. Elizabeth Wilson's enjoyable book is a quest for the many shifting meanings that constitute the bohemian and bohemia. She tells unforgettable stories of the artists, intellectuals, radicals, and hangers-on who populated the salons, bars, and cafs of Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, including Djuna Barnes, Juliette Greco, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Amiri Baraka, Andy Warhol, and Jackson Pollock. "Bohemians" also follows the women who contributed to the myth, including the wives and mistresses, the muses, lesbians, and independent artists. Wilson explores the bohemians' eccentric use of dress, the role of sex and erotic love, the bohemian search for excess, and the intransigent politics of many. As a new millennium begins, Wilson shows how notions of bohemianism remain at the core of heated cultural debates about the role of art and artists in an increasingly commodified and technological world.

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Review:

'Her intellectual enthusiam, ironic humour and delight in bohemian absurdity make this a fascinating book to read.' --Sheila Rowbotham, Financial Times

'...a book that is intricately informative, expertly researched and highly entertaining.' --Literary Review

From the Back Cover:

Since the early nineteenth century, the Bohemian has been the hero of the story the West has wanted to hear about its artists: a story of genius, glamour and doom. He is variously the artist dying in poverty like Chatterton or Modigliani, a successful self-destroyer like Jackson Pollock, a celebrity like Augustus John. Elizabeth Wilson's remarkable, enjoyable Bohemians is a quest for the many shifting meanings that constitute bohemianism.

Wilson tells the best of stories with a huge cast of characters among the artists, intellectuals, radicals and hangers-on who populated the salons, bars and cafes of Paris, London, New York and West Coast America. She follows the women who contributed to the myth - the wives and mistresses, muses, lesbians and independent artists. She explores the Bohemians' eccentric use of dress, the role of sex and erotic love, their search for excess and their intransigent politics. She further shows how, instead of disappearing, Bohemia is at the core of the most heated cultural debates at the start of the new millennium.

'Vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, procurers, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ-grinders, rag-pickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars - in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French term la boheme.' Karl Marx, 1848

'The mania of young artists to wish to live outside their time, with other ideas and other customs, isolates them from the world, renders them strange and bizarre, puts them outside the law, banished from sociey; these are today's bohemians.' Felix Pyat, 1834

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