NEW YORK BOHEMIANISM IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In the second half of the 19th century, artists in the United States were under social and economic pressures, which led many to live in poverty. As a consequence, Parisian Bohemianism was easily imported by expatriate artists and found a fertile ground in New York City. Traditionally, Paris and the Fine Arts were associated to vice and spiritual corruption and, at first, the bohemian lifestyle only reinforced these stereotypes. Yet, the growing capital injected onto the European art market brought the Fine Arts into a more acceptable sphere. As a result Bohemianism came to represent very contradictory values. Through novels, the printed press and paintings, Bohemianism came to be a vehicle for a wide variety of images which reflected the many changes which the United States were undergoing from the 1850s to the 1900s. For all these reasons, Bohemianism became in the United States a complex movement which underlined the complexities of a society entering its “Modern” age.