Urbanum Burgensis

If we cannot recognize the old bourgeois revolution in the act of gentrification by art, it is because modern theory has convinced us that this relationship is illegitimate. Bohemians and hipsters are not connected to the historical avant-garde, and the latter is not connected to the bourgeois revolution of the age of Enlightenment. It cannot be so, for this would amount to saying that gentrification contains within it the germ of revolution. We would have to posit some absurd theory, to the effect perhaps that the artist is the most consistent figure in the equation, and the other political and economic figures are variables that ultimately have to be rationalized in terms of the culture that the artist imposes upon the neighborhood.