Theory, practice, and competition in the visual arts: The fortunes of the paragone in French and British nineteenth-century art

My topic springs from many years of studying the paragone, which is the 'comparison' or rivalry between the arts, such as that between poets and painters, painters and sculptors, or aesthetic theorists and visual artists. Typically artists have been motivated to participate in the paragone during crises, such as changes to the hierarchy of the arts, shifting aesthetic theories, cultural and social changes to the artist's status, personal doubt, or political activism and patriotic endeavours. This dissertation addresses the lack of scholarship addressing the paragone's survival in the nineteenth century.;Rapid changes to the nineteenth-century art world contributed to the paragone's significance in this century especially. The shifting aesthetic theories and ideologies of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, the Academie des beaux-arts, and the Ecole des beaux-arts resulted in the great instability of artistic genres, and waning respect for traditional artistic institutions, such as the Salon, thereby affecting both professional and public opinion regarding art's value. Moreover, the intensification and rise of art criticism made visual artists vulnerable to writers in increasingly threatening ways. As well, the writings of aesthetic theorists represented a trend that affected the paragone's survival in the nineteenth century; there was an increasing movement in aesthetic theory, beginning in late eighteenth century, to impose either ideological or practical limits on the arts. This movement escalated rebelliousness amongst certain artists, who sought to prove their clever genius and the superiority of their art forms, by breaking their supposed limits.;Through my analysis of hegemonic artistic practice, my research has led to the discovery of motifs or subjects that are often evidence of the paragone manifested in a particular piece. My dissertation will begin with an examination of the proliferation of the beau ideal, or mastery of the human figure's ideal representation in painting or sculpture, which was, (since the Renaissance), indicative of artistic skill, and remained a signifier of artistic supremacy in early to mid-nineteenth-century art. Since antiquity, the mythological account of Narcissus, (the young man who falls in love with his own image, because of his astounding beauty), has represented the power of masculine beauty to entrance its viewers. This tradition, which paralleled the cult of male beauty propagated in Greek art, was inherited by nineteenth-century artists in the form of the beau ideal.;Even though portrayals of the beau ideal recurred throughout the nineteenth century, the early preference for male figures was matched, by the mid-nineteenth century, to greater interest in the female nude. In particular, the Pygmalion myth became emblematic of the ultimate mastery of the nude figure in art; Ovid's account of Pygmalion in his Metamorphoses epitomised the crux of the paragone debate at this time. In this myth the sculptor Pygmalion, symbolic of the archetypal artist, creates a figure of a woman that in turn represents the ultimate artistic creation; she is so beautiful that he entreats Venus to bring her to life. This myth speaks to the image's power over the viewer, and therefore to the power of the visual arts. The final subject explores the legacy of Gustave Moreau's versions of Salome, which engendered a host of competitive responses to his portrayal of this subject, such that Salome became a signifier of artistic rivalry, as much as she was of the femme fatale. I will also explore a new interpretation of Salome that emerged in the nineteenth century that heightened her visual and iconic impact on viewers. The narrative features of the Salome subject made it an ideal source for paragonising artists. As a symbol of sensual and material beauty, she mirrored the material and decorative nature of the Aesthetic and decadent movements in the arts at this time.;My research offers an interpretational tool that may be used by other scholars with respect to the examination of individual artists or writers, while providing a basis for further studies in this framework. Demonstrating the topic's ultimate potential is one of the most important scholars in the field: W.J.T. Mitchell. In his Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, Mitchell addresses the paragone's importance to scholarship, and shows how its fundamental concerns continue to be played out by successive generations of artists, even in technological media, which is an indication of its relevance to a broad range of study in the humanities, including not only art history but theory and criticism, western literature, film studies, and the fine arts. My dissertation, however, focuses on the actual implementation of a paragonising artistic theory in artworks throughout the nineteenth century. In so doing it strengthens scholarly understanding of the themes, artists, and works addressed, while demonstrating the importance of acknowledging artistic competition.