Bohemia: a liberal and arty utopia, occupied of course by that semi-mythical race of ‘bohemians’ – those who “live as vagabonds, an unregimented life without assured resources, who do not worry about tomorrow” (or at least what the 1932 Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française would have us believe). Bohemia has popped up apparently quite by chance, in different centres and at different times. Within it, emblematic generations of artists are fostered and united behind ideals of eccentricity, amorality, and rebellion. France has historically been Bohemia’s obvious home: it gifted us La bohème, and it sold a vision of the 1920s’ gin-soaked existentialists, sharing ideas, and drinks, and beds. The beatniks tore up San Francisco (and its anti-obscenity laws) in the 1950s. Kreuzberg was an oasis of promiscuity, poetry, and poverty in 1970s West Berlin, ringed as it was on three sides by the Berlin Wall. London’s Soho and New York’s Greenwich Village accommodated artists, sex workers and a growing gay community through the 1980s and 1990s. But where are the bohemians now?

Bohemianism is born of two tenets: first, poverty. You can’t call yourself a bohemian if you haven’t gotten tuberculosis, or at least incinerated your own artwork in the absence of a heated home. Secondly, a bohemian rejects the cultural norms, be that capitalistic hegemony, the nuclear family, or disdain for substance and alcohol abuse. In the musical RENT, the song ‘La vie bohème’ spends two verses listing these subversive, bohemian pastimes: bisexuality, free choice, masturbation, marijuana, and “anything taboo”. The majority of these practices are (thank goodness) no longer violations of the norm – I can happily report that with regards to progressivist and accepting attitudes towards gender and sexuality, we are most of us now a little bohemian. LGBT+, feminist, and social justice issues have an incredibly long way to go – but it is right that these discussions are now happening in mainstream politics and people can be freer and safer in practising life and love away from the fringes and frowns of society.

Meanwhile, political and intellectual agendas have been adopted by the new bourgeoisie – Angelou, Kerouac, Orwell, and Rushdie are just as likely to adorn the bookshelves of bankers in Chelsea than those in roach-infested student bedrooms. Again, it’s good that these voices are being appreciated and shared, but this is part of a larger and more insidious problem in which works of art, especially those that are politically vocal and are treated as conversation pieces rather than valuable commentaries. Art is violently de-radicalised when it’s adorning the walls of a penthouse or parlour. I find it hard to credit Banksy as bohemian when he’s made a coffee-table book and Brad Pitt collects his work. Andy Warhol’s factory started off as a very clever commentary of mass-consumerism and commerciality in art, but it wasn’t supposed to be adopted as a model (clearly Jeff Koons didn’t get the memo). Bohemian fashion has likewise suffered, with glossies like Elle and Vogue promising us that we can look exactly like Kate Moss and Sienna Miller if we buy a flower crown and don’t brush our hair for a week. They have carefully and deliberately forgotten that that it is distinctly un-bohemian to allow another to dictate your dress, and the lack of self-awareness is painful in its irony.

Nowhere is this new-rich bohemian appropriation clearer than in the ‘Bohemian grove retreat’, a 2,700-acre reserve in California where some of the richest and most powerful men in the world go to play (among them every Republican president since the turn of the century). It is billed as a rule-free escape from the harsh realities of civilised living, where the booze flows freely and bedroom doors are left open at night. Their selective poverty is deeply offensive – you cannot pay to enjoy the benefits of liberated living while denying its harsher realities – no rent, no healthcare, no public acknowledgement of your work. The burning man festival is little better – once a temporary commune founded upon the principles of decommodification, immediacy, and self-expression, it is now an annual bacchanalia that exists solely to fuel the Instagram feeds of models and heiresses. Rebellion is reserved for the rich. 

Meanwhile, being a poor artist is an everlasting reality; having a shared space in which to be so is not. Mass gentrification and astronomical living costs in areas like Soho, Kreuzberg, and Alphabet City are pushing out creatives (the very groups that made such areas desirable in the first place). The average rent in New York now well exceeds $3,000 a month. Sadiq Khan is addressing this problem in London, pledging to foster Creative Enterprise Zones – estates of affordable, live-in studios, but doesn’t tackle the problem at grassroots level. Arts education is expensive – the majority of us can’t justify a £30,000 degree or training course that will only fuel dozens more unpaid internships, or a few paintings sold as interest pieces for the walls of your local delicatessen-cum-coffee shop. There’s a reason why the top jobs in the art world are full of privately educated Oxbridge graduates. 

It is harder to blame some of our more celebrated artists for their depressingly bourgeois lifestyles when the alternative is considered. It’s very romantic to imagine living as a bohemian, less so to die as one – alcoholism, drug abuse, as well as crime and poor and unsanitary living conditions are not eventualities many of us would willingly subscribe to. The ideal of working for so hard and long only to become an aspiring novelist with 12 roommates and no running water has lost its romance. I’m not sure that being able to live without inherited money or a boring white-collar job, while making art, making love, and challenging the bourgeois capitalist hetero-patriarchy has ever been possible, and I don’t think it ever will. Most millennials are more concerned escaping crippling debt and paying for prescriptions. So, rest in peace Bohemia. You were a lovely idea, but for the most of us management consultancy awaits