The Lehmbeck reading on the relationship between fine art and early French cinema really struck me because it calls into question the hierarchical value of art and how that is dictated by the viewership.

Previously the viewing of fine arts had been confined to that of the upper classes, but alongside the rise of street culture (the street as a museum), the physical spaces of fine art exhibition were becoming more accessible to the middle and working class. The Exposition Universelle attracted people from every social class of France, but it also attracted people from other countries where the societal structure may not even have an equivalent to the French social hierarchy. The French elites in the crowd were touching shoulders with people from classes they had rarely previously encountered. They were both viewing the same thing, experiencing a shared viewership. This commonality brought them to the same level, even if just for a moment. 

As the Salon de Paris opened it’s doors on Sunday to the lower classes with free admission, Lehmbeck noted how it “did not escape criticism from the middle and upper classes, who looked down their noses at the crowds on Sundays, the one break in the working week.” (Lehmbeck 92) The same art space that just a day before on Saturday was being revered as the pinnacle of artistic culture by the elites transformed into something to be regarded with distain. It is the same art, the same space, but the people occupying it and engaging in the viewing of the art in a way determines the value of the art itself, proving how subjective this placing of value is and how fickle this value was.

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1890 painting Pygmalion et Galathé particularly strikes me because it is a subversive crossroad of two fine art mediums, painting and sculpture, that had very different social connotations at the time of it’s creation. “Painting was often considered divinely inspired, and was prized for its singularity. Sculpture, on the other hand, was material and typically reproducible—cast or carved from models—and therefore required far less from a viewer because it could be understood in physical terms alone.” (Lehmbeck 93) It is a painting that adheres to all the technical conventions of the time that makes a piece valuable and worthy of display at the Salon. As a painting it is revered, but it is a painting of a sculpture. Yes, the narrative of the painting is a portrayal of a story from Ovid’s Metamorphosis with themes of love and art, but at it’s core it is a painting of a sculpture. With this painting Gérôme forced critics to love something they hate. A sculpture and subject matter the critics normally would have thumbed their noses about is translated through mediums into a painting, into a piece the critics adored. 

I questions whether this was an intentional subversion from Gérôme to criticize this subjective hierarchal valuing of fine arts based on their audience? It is possible he could have also ignored these social influences all together and simply chose to portray a myth that has always been popular. Either way I wonder what effect this painting had on discussions of valuing sculpture and painting as two separate levels of art?