Artistic Autonomy in the Modern Era, The Paradox of Constraints, Creativity, and the Bohemian Spirit
Often, one does appreciate keeping tabs on the latest gossip or news bites in the arts fraternity – and quite often, one hears about artists’ occasional marches, the activist types boycotting something or another. It is true, though, that there are challenges within the industry; and the government, either through ignorance or disinterest on their part, is doing quite little, if not nothing, to soothe whatever is ailing the industry. ?
For one to say anything or utter any concrete words about intricate arts issues would be to mislead, as such matters are complex and can vary – from an individual angle.
I do wonder though, as some famous psychologist from Canada often does, whether in our discussions or arguments (public or private), we ever consider the nature, or even the psyche, of an artist.
Query: What makes us think that giving artists a platform and support is truly what makes them thrive? What if constraints are what fuel their creativity and expression?
I know, dear reader, that your quick mind probably wants to argue in favour of the Renaissance era's great patrons such as the Medici (for their sponsorship of great art and architecture). However, consider for a moment that the reality of the modern art world presents a nuanced picture. While historical examples like the Medici patrons indeed played a crucial role in fostering artistic endeavours, our contemporary understanding of artists' needs and motivations may differ.
Artistic voices back then were pliant to the orders and whims of their masters (funders). Anything critical from the artistic soul and against the master or king was something akin to risking losing your belongings, life, or daily bread, among other things. Whereas today's thinkers (or creatives in our context) are all about the freedom of expression and a free society. I mean, who would wish to fund someone only to be critiqued by the receiver?
Anyway, I don’t wish to claim the status of an artist, but I’ve interacted with many artistic friends (and still do) in my life. If you care to ask me, I’ll humbly inform you that, like the rest of humanity, they are diverse in their backgrounds, experiences, and motivations (as if you didn’t know that!).
While some may thrive under the spotlight and benefit from support and platforms, others might draw inspiration from the constraints and challenges they face. I do think creativity often thrives in adversity, and for many artists, their struggles and personal experiences are deeply intertwined with their creative work.
Oddly enough, if you care to know, my ill-advised psychological awareness and stance dictate that the psyche of an artist can be a complex and multifaceted thing. Some artists may produce their best work when they are in a state of emotional turmoil (or financial troubles, without the modern Medici types to fund them) and use their art as a means of catharsis or self-expression.
Others might find their creativity stifled when they are too comfortable or lack external pressures.
My humble assumption indicates the importance of respecting an artist's autonomy and recognising, therefore, that their unique circumstances and inner motivations play a significant role in their creative process.
Interestingly, at least for me, great artists usually have a signature style, most of which is influenced by their personal travails and unique life experiences. These elements infuse their work with a depth of emotion and authenticity that resonates deeply with audiences, fans, or supporters (yes, even funders, potentially).
That is, of course, what I think.
Perhaps unrelated, a historical perspective from a French poet and novelist (from the 19th century) could provide us with profound insights about the Bohemians, who were artists, really.
It was a book (thanks to the availability of online PDF files) that I came across – Henry Murger's magnum opus, 'Scenes from the Bohemian Life.' While I haven't delved into the entirety of the book just yet, acquainting myself with its preface has brought me great joy during this December holiday, offering profound insights. Before embarking on this literary exploration and discovering its existence in book form, I had the privilege of immersing myself in Giacomo Puccini's delightful yet ultimately tragic opera, aptly titled 'La Bohème.'
In fact, I had the pleasure of participating in the opera as a member of the chorus back in 2017 at Jo’burg Theatre. Fond memories, indeed; as I digress, let me add that, as I pen this article, Puccini's lovely opera plays in the background, serving as inspiration for the moment.
Reading the original text from which the opera came has been a great delight. In Murger’s text, I learned (from merely the preface) about Bohemia as a race – born not today, as it has eternally existed, everywhere, and may even claim illustrious origins.
In the book, from the outset, Murger warns his readers: ‘The bohemians discussed in this book have no relation to the bohemians whom boulevard playwrights have made synonymous with thieves and assassins. Nor are they recruited among the bear handlers, the sword swallowers, the safety chain sellers, the professors of “every time you win", the merchants of the slums of the agio, and a thousand other mysterious and vague industrialists whose main industry is to have none, and who are always ready to do everything, except good.’?
You wonder then, dear reader, what this scribe (moi, of course) – of no consequence at that – is talking about here? Be patient; this is a voyage. The preface of the book is oddly insightful, with phrases that entice curiosity, yet with a little, albeit unexpected, amusement.
To develop the case for his version of Bohemia as he understands it, Murger writes: ‘At the time which serves as a transition between the times of chivalry and the dawn of the renaissance, Bohemia continues to roam all the roads of the kingdom, and already to some extent the streets of Paris.
'This is Master Pierre Gringoire, the friend of thugs and the enemy of fasting; thin and hungry as a man whose existence is only one long Lent can be, he walks the streets of the city, his nose to the wind like a dog rising, smelling the smell of the kitchens and rotisseries; his eyes, full of gluttonous desires, make the hams hanging from the butchers' hooks lose weight, just by looking at them, while he rings, in his imagination, and not in his pockets, alas! The ten crowns promised to him by the aldermen as payment for the very pious and devout sotie which he composed for the theater in the courthouse hall.
'Alongside this doleful and melancholy profile of Esmeralda's lover, the chronicles of Bohemia can evoke a companion with a less ascetic mood and a more joyful face; It was Master Fran?ois Villon, the beauty's lover, who was her mother. Poet and vagabond par excellence, that one! And whose poetry, largely imagined, no doubt because of these presentiments that the ancients attribute to their vates, was constantly pursued by a singular preoccupation with the gallows, where the said Villon one day almost got a hemp tie for wanting to look too closely at the color of the king's shields.
'This same Villon, who had more than once left the constabulary chasing after him out of breath, this rowdy host in the dives of rue Pierre-Lescot, this freeloader from the court of the Duke of Egypt, this Salvator Rosa of poetry, rhymed elegies whose heartbroken sentiment and sincere accent move the most merciless, and make them forget the scoundrel, the vagabond, and the debauched, in front of this muse all streaming with her own tears.’?
Of course, I apologize for quoting this huge chunk, but understand that I wish to put Murger’s case forward without much dilution, as it were. I'm still surprised that so much in a book’s preface has been stated; and this makes me wonder how much detail will be left when it gets to the actual content of the novel, or is it a play? – but I'm having fun. So, I continue.
I must confess to not knowing much about Murger; there, I admit it. But a further glance into the book’s preface does reveal his sense of history and knowledge.
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There's a passage in which he speaks about historic, artistic figures, and leaders of the Renaissance age with immense panache, saying, ‘here is the great century of renaissance which is dawning. Michelangelo climbs the scaffolds of the Sistine and looks with concern at young Raphael who climbs the stairs of the Vatican, carrying the boxes of boxes under his arm. Benvenuto meditates on his Perseus, Ghiberti chisels the doors of the baptistery at the same time as Donatello erects his marbles on the bridges of the Arno; and while the city of the Medici competes in masterpieces with the city of Leo X and Julius II, Titian and Veronese illustrate the city of the Doges; Saint-Marc fights with Saint-Pierre.’
Make what you will about that, but I do find joy when a creative writer, such as Murger is, showcases their mastery in turning a delightful, insightful phrase.
Murger achieves this a great deal, with an occasional short sentence: ‘Art, rival of God, walks the equal of kings.’ Clearly holding art in high regard, he argues that “[t]he religious wars and political storms which signaled the arrival of the Medici in France did not stop the growth of art.’
At some point towards the end of his tirade for a preface, he takes a quick jab at modern literary terms, saying: ‘paradox, this spoiled child of modern literature.’ But I moved too quick!??
Anyway, finally we get to the point – and odd enough – as much as his palpable respect for the arts we briefly glimpsed, Murger has a warning about it as a career path: ‘Today, as in the past, any man who enters the arts, with no other means of existence than art itself, will be forced to follow the paths of Bohemia. Most of the contemporaries who displayed the most beautiful emblems of art were bohemians; and, in their calm and prosperous glory, they often remember, perhaps regretting it, the time when, climbing the green hill of youth, they had no other fortune, in the sunshine of their twenties, than courage, which is the virtue of the young, and hope, which is the million of the poor.’?
By and by, that last line: 'hope, which is the million of the poor', makes me think of that moment in the aria where the tenor Rodolpho in La Bohème passionately expresses the value of hope amidst poverty, so brilliantly captured and transformed in Puccini's music.
Anyway, Murger further develops his idea of Bohemia.
At this instance, dear reader, I’ll repeat my fault of vast quotations, so do bear with me. Murger renders a detailed, insightful statement about Bohemia, in which he states that as in ‘any social state, Bohemia has different nuances, various genres which are themselves subdivided and of which it will not be useless to establish the classification.’??
To establish this classification, he postulates as follows: ‘We will start with ignored Bohemia, the most numerous. It is made up of the large family of poor artists, fatally condemned to the law of incognito, because they do not know or cannot find a corner of publicity to attest to their existence in art, and, by this that they already are, to prove what they could be one day. These are the race of stubborn dreamers for whom art has remained a faith and not a profession; enthusiastic, convinced people, to whom the sight of a masterpiece is enough to give a fever, and whose loyal heart beats loudly before everything that is beautiful, without asking the name of the master or the school.
'This bohemianism is recruited among those young people who are said to give rise to hopes, and among those who realize the hopes given, but who, through carelessness, timidity, or ignorance of practical life, imagine that everything is said when the work is finished, and wait for public admiration and fortune to enter their home by escalation and break-in. They live, so to speak, on the margins of society, in isolation and inertia. Petrified in art, they take to the exact letter the symbols of the academic dithyramb which place a halo on the foreheads of poets, and, convinced that they blaze in their shadow, they wait for someone to come and find them.’?
Concurrently, Murger notes the existence, he says, ‘in the heart of unknown Bohemia similar beings whose misery excites a sympathetic pity to which common sense forces you to return; because if you calmly point out to them that we are in the nineteenth century [the time of book publication, dear reader], that the hundred sous coin is empress of humanity, and that the boots do not fall all varnished from the sky, they turn their backs on you and call you bourgeois.’?
Weird enough, ‘they are logical in their insane heroism; they utter neither cries nor complaints, and passively submit to the obscure and rigorous destiny that they make for themselves. Most of them die, decimated by this disease to which science does not dare to give its real name, poverty. If they wanted to, however, many could escape this fatal outcome which suddenly ends their lives at an age when life is usually only just beginning. For this it would be enough for them to make a few concessions to the harsh laws of necessity, that is to say, to know how to split their nature, to have within them two beings: the poet, always dreaming on the high peaks where the choir sings inspired voices; and the man, worker of his life knowing how to knead daily bread.
'But this duality, which almost always exists in strong natures of which it is one of the distinctive characteristics, is not found in the majority of these young people whom pride, a bastard pride, has made invulnerable to all the advice of reason. So they die young, sometimes leaving behind them a work which the world admires later, and which it would undoubtedly have applauded earlier if it had not remained invisible.’??
How terribly sad then, as Murger concurs, that ‘their existence ends unknown, and, sometimes without even having the consolation of smiling at a finished work, [as] they pass away from life buried in a shroud of indifference.’
We learn thenceforth about ‘[t]he paths of art, so crowded and so perilous, despite the congestion and despite the obstacles, are nevertheless more and more crowded every day, and consequently Bohemia has never been more numerous’, Murger, as he holds summarily.?
Murger appears to believe that numerous young individuals earnestly embraced the impassioned speeches concerning suffering artists and poets. The frequent and thoughtless invocation of names such as Gilbert, Malfilatre, Chatterton, and Moreau has turned the resting places of these ill-fated souls into platforms, he argues, from which the agony of art and poetry's struggle has been tirelessly expounded.?
Murger then proceeds to assert that excessive condemnation should not be heaped upon these deceitful falsehoods and paradoxes, as they divert countless individuals away from paths where they could have thrived, leading them to ultimately languish in careers where they obstruct those genuinely endowed with the right to partake. It is these perilous sermons and superfluous posthumous glorifications that have given rise to the ludicrous category of the misunderstood, the weeping poets whose muse perpetually bears red eyes and dishevelled hair, as well as the ineffectual mediocrities who, trapped beneath the vice of the unprecedented, label the muse as a stepmother and art as an executioner.?
I find Murger's writing more enjoyable when he delves into philosophical musings. In one such moment, he articulates as follows: ‘All truly powerful minds have their say and indeed say it sooner or later. Genius or talent are not unforeseen accidents in humanity; they have a reason for being, and therefore cannot always remain in obscurity; because if the crowd does not go out to meet them, they know how to go out to meet them. The genius is the sun: everyone sees it. Talent is the diamond that can remain lost in the shadows for a long time, but which is always seen by someone. It is therefore wrong to feel sorry for the lamentations and refrains of this class of intruders and useless people who entered art despite art itself, and who compose in Bohemia a category in which laziness, debauchery and parasitism form the basis of morals.’?
Murger then proceeds to discuss authentic Bohemia, which is, in part, the focus of this book – as he tells his readers. Its inhabitants are truly the chosen disciples of art and have the potential to become its favoured adherents. Similar to other bohemian circles, this one is fraught with hazards, flanked on either side by the gaping chasms of poverty and uncertainty. However, amid these two precipices lies at least a pathway that leads bohemians towards a tangible destination they can envision, all the while yearning for the day when they can grasp it with their own hands.??
This is the recognised Bohemia, according to Murger, bearing its name because those who belong to it have publicly acknowledged their existence and affirmed their presence in life, extending beyond mere bureaucratic records. To put it in their own terms, their names adorn posters, they are acknowledged in the literary and artistic marketplace, and their creations, bearing their distinct mark, are available there at affordable prices – indeed, I'll take Murger’s words.?
‘To achieve their goal, which is perfectly determined, all paths are good, and bohemians know how to take advantage of even road accidents. Rain or dust, shadow or sun, nothing stops these bold adventurers, whose every vice is coupled with a virtue. The mind always kept alert by their ambition, which beats the charge before them and pushes them to attack the future: tirelessly struggling with necessity, their invention, which always works with a lit fuse, blows up the obstacle that barely bothers them. Their daily existence is a work of genius, a daily problem that they always manage to solve with the help of daring mathematics.
'These people would be lent money by Harpagon. If necessary, they also know how to practice abstinence with all the virtue of an anchorite; but if a little fortune falls into their hands, you immediately see them cavalcade on the most ruinous fantasies, loving the most beautiful and the youngest, drinking from the best and the oldest, and never finding enough windows by where to throw their money. Then, when their last crown is dead and buried, they begin to dine again at the table d'h?te of chance where their table is always set, and, preceded by a pack of tricksters, poaching in all the industries which are linked to the art, hunt from morning to evening this ferocious animal called the five-franc piece.’?
At a certain juncture, it becomes quite surreal to perceive Murger walking alongside his Bohemian companions (let’s call them that, yes), almost as if he's tracing their every move, narrating the Bohemians' profound understanding of life and their ability to adapt based on the condition of their footwear, whether it be pristine patent boots or well-worn, punctured ones.?At times, Murger even goes so far as to include himself in the Bohemian milieu.
In this instance, he observes: ‘We meet them one day leaning on the fireplace of a social salon, and the next day seated under the arbors of dancing taverns. They could not walk ten steps on the boulevard without meeting a friend, and thirty steps anywhere without meeting a creditor.’?
Thereafter, Murger says: ‘Bohemia speaks a particular language among itself, borrowed from workshop chats, backstage jargon and editorial office discussions.’
This may prompt the reader to ponder whether these Bohemians are perhaps former, retired, or even current individuals from the world of theatre, be it actors, scriptwriters and journalists who find themselves in straitened circumstances. Yet, Murger doesn’t offer much insight in that regard.??
Reading Murger, one gets a sense of that great depth of literary inheritance, that can’t simply be enumerated but just enjoyed – at least I have, and that’s my view of his work. It was written, or rather completed in, May 1850.
At the end of the book’s preface, Henry Murger signs off – H M.??