Bodo von Dewitz (ed.), La Bohème. The staging of the artist in photographs of the 19 and 20 Century. Catalogue of the exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2010th 399 pages, bound in cloth, 58 €.
Sartre wrote in his brilliant Study of Charles Baudelaire:
"Baudelaire manifests its peculiarity within the existing world. In a movement of rebellion and anger he has first opposite of his mother and stepfather. But this is just to riot, not a revolutionary act. The revolutionary wants to change the world, he brings them toward the future, towards a value scale that he invented himself. The rebels, however, ensures that the abuses under which he has suffered remain in place so that he can rebel against them. "
Sartre's investigation is still today a benchmark for all that follows through Baudelaire, - even if it comes along as a modest essay, '. The existentialist continues:
"He always carries elements of a bad conscience and a kind of guilt around with him. He wants to destroy not overcome yet, but turn against the order. The more he attacks them, the more he respects them secretly, and the laws that it disputes in public, he kept in his heart, they would disappear, they disappear with his existence. "
Eugene Durieu, nude, Paris about 1853, albumen paper, 18.9 x 13 cm.
What Sartre describes here is the fundamental law of Bohème: What would be the chance to stand out from the Philistines, to be able to - and to achieve this disengagement, an audience - if the many activities! the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the exhibition recently opened La Bohème - The staging of the artist in photographs of the 19 and 20 century. The title stacked low, there is a great credit to the curators see in scope and nature of the presentation.
On the Concept of Bohème, everyone has an idea that - in contrast to that of the dandy - not usually be so wrong. Often, the definition, that the notion of bohemian subculture call, in the intellectual edge and artistic groups within the industrializing societies of the 19th and 20 Century to settle the same. By symbolic aggression and actions that do not harm their reputation.
was notified of the designation, Bohème 'by the book gypsy life - scenes from the Parisian literary and artistic life (German title) by Henri Murger. In fact, the concept of the term Gypsy Bohemian descent. Interestingly, the Baudelaire poem in the Fleurs du was once Bohemians en voyage translated into German by gypsy road . And really it is about a traveling soothsayer troupe, not by urban artist-provocateurs.
Bodo von Dewitz, curator of the exhibition makes clear in the introduction to the catalog of the exhibition, how the development of two factors, Bohème 'and the disclosure of which caused and reinforced. The first factor is the technical modernity with its scientific progress and their various consequences, such as urban flight, poverty and revolution. The second important fact is that in the second half of the 19th century emergence of photography. Many attributed the bohemian artists used the new medium immediately for showmanship and self-expression. An initial importance of the photographer Nadar, whose portraits of many artists in Paris had now widely understood. Milan Chlumski writes in his article, know why: Nadar had earned an early reputation as an outstanding portrait photographer, which meant that the Paris art Chickeria in him was the door handle in his hand. Nadar, however, was genius enough to his client only appears in the best light documented. Milan Chlumski writes: "Nadar was very well informed about the life of the bohemian, the dandy and artist. His opinion about a person was reflected in the portraits of them. One has only to his portrait of the writer and would-be dandies Champ Fleury look at, to know what the photographer saw in him a careerist, the gutting on his way to fame and power allegedly Balzac heritage. "
Gaspard Félix Tournachon dit Nadar: Nadar and his wife Ernestine, Paris, 1865,
albumen paper, 9x8 cm, collection of Thomas Walther
That the Steidl distinguished publisher of the catalog-book charge, can be seen as a fluke. The print quality of Göttingen has a worldwide reputation. It is worth holding, that the publisher himself old printing machines and has saved from being scrapped monitors the pressure of his books manic person.
The print quality - the one by Steidl books already seen the way the smell - corresponds to the content. The theme of the bohemian her photographic self-presentation is illuminated in many ways, over two dozen angles. A total of 29 articles deal with important people, places and individual facets: the creation of bohemia in the literature, Gustave Courbet, Hippolyte Bayard, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and other European cities are hotbeds of avant-garde culture topics. Bayard staged in 1840 in a photograph as a drowned man to show his "selfless resistance " (Bodo von Dewitz) against the rejection by the academy. The apparent ritual suicide of a desperate man had tradition in art history was, but with the advent of photography, a new Buoyancy.
Particularly gratifying is the brevity of the texts and their deep understanding among the academic ivory tower, which does not detract from their level. Thus, the bibliophile and aesthetic catalog book became a kind of German Guide Bohème.
