For over a century, cafés have been the preferred gathering spot for influential writers, artists, and those who wanted to imbibe the creative atmosphere along with their cup of coffee. Nowadays, if you walk into a cafe like Tryst in Adams Morgan, you are likely to find yourself with a group of loitering patrons, heads buried in their fluorescent laptop screens. Although Tryst’s ever-changing décor of work by local artists gives the café a countercultural flair that attracts a trendier clientele, it generally serves the contemporary function of providing a five-minute visual reprieve from compulsive Facebook checking and those caffeine-inspired papers.
In the days before Wi-Fi and an overworked population, cafés were less about an individual escape into an artsy atmosphere than they were about the individuals that made the environment intellectually stimulating and exciting. In the early 20th century, avant-garde movements and artist alliances bloomed over cups of coffee and exuberant dialogue. In Vienna, the Kaffeehaus scene provided an environment of heated debate which gave birth to the Young Vienna literary movement and the Vienna Secession, originally headed by Gustav Klimt. The Secession rebelled against the conservative teachings of the only exhibit space in the city, the Künstlerhaus, and reinforced the counterculture offshoots fostered by the café scene.
In the late 1800s, the Parisian Café Guerbois was the site of bohemian culture, where anti-bourgeois artists like Monet, Renoir, and Degas exchanged ideas and the occasional duel when things got out of hand. Les Deux Magots was the café hotspot for surrealist writers like Andre Breton, and later a more diverse group which included Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Albert Camus. I attempted to live vicariously through history a few summers ago, insisting that my friend and I dine at Les Deux Magots, only to find a café overrun by tourists, overpriced omelettes, and condescending waiters that actually say “Huh huh huh?”
So where have all the bohemians gone? Even cafés that operate as informal galleries seem to garner the post-modern patron who prefers to sip his coffee in isolation. You’re more likely to find artists at Friday evening gallery openings, but that scene is too temporary and shifting to forge any solid alliances. Perhaps the problem is a lack of individuals who can afford not to work and sit around in cafés all day exchanging words and clashing fists. But with the economy down and coffee one of the few pleasures affordable to the starving artist, maybe people will sell their laptops, buy a box of crayons, don a beret, and relive the bohemian days over a cappuccino. If only.
Help a starving artist feel some affordable pleasures. Send a message to Madeline at mreidy@staff.georgetownvoice.com.
