Theorizing the Cultural Roots of the Bohemian Artist

The bohemian as a social stereotype first found definition on the pages of Parisian popular magazines sometime around the mid-1840s. 1 Associated with the carefree and impoverished existence of artists on the fringes of middle-class life, the bohemian gained a surprising degree of symbolic importance among his contemporaries. Indeed, he came to be seen as the first embodiment of the artist of modernity and the privileged interpreter of aesthetic truths in contemporary society. 2 Although the social and personal aspects of the bohemian way of life have become clichés, the cultural meanings and implications of the phenomenon remain full of contradiction. 3