In Paris of course then the capital of the arts

While Mimi dies in his attic, the painter, lean and pale, attempts to exchange one of his works against some food or a little money in a Montmartre café. The mythology of the art world mediated by "Scenes of Bohemian life", from Henri Murger, is the theme of an exhibition of the National Gallery, London. The romance at the dawn of the 20th century, artists willingly complied with this model: misunderstood creators, rejected by the public, but incorruptible and ready to suffer, or even to die for their art.

While the classical artist was living in a society that brought him success and believes, the romantic artist is a solitary, obedient to a vocation, and determined to impose his vision. The self-portraits of Otto Runge and Henry Fuseli show these young artists to inhabited look.

But if the creator is perceived differently, it is primarily because society has changed in the early 19th century. The artist now must seduce a bourgeois class emerged with the industrial revolution. He must seduce in salons, at the mercy of the public comments or criticism. It was born the bohème, this vision of young neighborhoods artists living between a cold workshop and noisy cafés. In Paris, of course, then the capital of the arts. From Montmartre to the Batignolles, they were to live this life, to Picasso, residing in the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre at the dawn of the great war. Gustave Courbet is a manifesto of his artistic freedom: "In our so civilized society, it is necessary to the life of a wild." "I have my postage meter even Governments," he wrote in 1850. And to show, in "Bonjour monsieur Courbet" how his patron Alfred Bruyas a meeting welcomes well down the artist... A dream, of course.

But Bohemia has only a time: the more established artists dress as their clients and hang in the same places as Manet enjoyed portraying himself himself, in dress and top form, "music in the garden of the Tuileries". An opportunity to observe the life of his fellow citizens. Other artists, in the lineage of Baudelaire, treat their implementation and their attitude. These are the promenaded, planing high above the vulgar in the world of beauty, as James Whistler.

Suffering for art turns sometimes to martyrdom: Gauguin and Van Gogh to see Christ in agony. Van Gogh, poor, sick, which will eventually commit suicide probably remains the artist who best embodies the divorce between the artist and society.

Paradoxes: exhibition is rebel and not city where to take place in more is not the least. Since they are discovered a passion for contemporary art, ten years ago, the British are willing to praise their artists and are fascinated by their success. Happens not week without the talking of Damien Hirst, his animals preserved in formaldehyde and his wealth: it is 554e on the "rich list" of the "Times", with 100 million pounds. And project to create a death Platinum encrusted Diamond Head which will be the subject of the most expensive art world, nothing as raw material.