Academic Art: Gérôme's Pygmalion and Galatea

The Royal Academy and Academic art
The Royal Academy in France, founded in 1648 (there was also one in England) was an arm of the monarchy. The kings and the ruling parties of France had always recognized that controlling what art looked like and what it depicted was an effective means of controlling public opinion. This is one of the primary reasons that art was always seen as so politically charged. If you went against the rules of art, you were a rebel against the government.

The Royal Academy essentially controlled the teaching of art (it ran the Ecole des Beaux Arts, or School of Fine Arts), and the exhibiting of art (by holding an exhibition every year or two, which was called the "Salon"). For much of its history, the Royal Academy (made up of members appointed for life—so you can imagine their average age) promoted work that was based on ancient Greek and Roman art, and the art of the Renaissance. These styles were upheld as the single definition of beauty that all artists were required to follow.

Hierarchy of Subjects
In addition, the Royal Academy created a hierarchy of subject matter and genre. History painting was considered the most elevated subject, and still-life and portraits were deemed the lowest. History paintings (which included noble historic moments, ancient Greek and Roman mythology, and biblical subjects) were held to be the highest because they depicted heroic figures and subjects in compositional scenes invented by the artist. Still-life painting and portraits were held to be the lowest because such genres were not considered to demonstrate invention. The artist was, in this view, simply painting what was in front of him or her. Genre scenes, or paintings of every day life, were also considered a lowly subject because they did not offer the heroic and noble.

Prix de Rome
The Royal Academy sponsored a rigorous yearly competition, the Prix de Rome. The winning artist got time to study at the French Academy in Rome. In the last half of the nineteenth century, the art that was favored by the academy and by the public was a watered-down version of history painting—quaint, sentimental images with a clear narrative and a studied realism.

Gérôme's Pygmalion and Galatea is a good example of Academic art in the last half of the nineteenth century. The subject is taken from Ovid's Metamorphosis. The sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with his own creation, and the goddess Venus makes the sculpted figure (Galatea) come to life.

Here is the text from Ovid’s Metamorphosis:

"Pygmalion had seen them, spending their lives in wickedness, and, offended by the failings that nature gave the female heart, he lived as a bachelor, without a wife or partner for his bed. But, with wonderful skill, he carved a figure, brilliantly, out of snow-white ivory, no mortal woman, and fell in love with his own creation. He marvels: and passion, for this bodily image, consumes his heart. Often, he runs his hands over the work, tempted as to whether it is flesh or ivory, not admitting it to be ivory.

He kisses it and thinks his kisses are returned; and speaks to it; and holds it, and imagines that his fingers press into the limbs, and is afraid lest bruises appear from the pressure. The day of Venus’s festival came…when Pygmalion, having made his offering, stood by the altar, and said, shyly: “If you can grant all things, you gods, I wish as a bride to have…” and not daring to say “the girl of ivory” he said “one like my ivory girl.”

Golden Venus, for she herself was present at the festival, knew what the prayer meant, and as a sign of the gods’ fondness for him, the flame flared three times, and shook its crown in the air. When he returned, he sought out the image of his girl, and leaning over the couch, kissed her. She felt warm: he pressed his lips to her again, and also touched her breast with his hand. The ivory yielded to his touch, and lost its hardness, altering under his fingers…. The lover is stupefied, and joyful, but uncertain, and afraid he is wrong, reaffirms the fulfilment of his wishes, with his hand, again, and again."

And a couple of feminist texts to set beside this:

Claribel Alegría, “Galatea Before the Mirror”:

my perfection isn’t mine
you invented it

I am only the mirror 

in which you preen yourself

and for that very reason

I despise you.

Simone de Beauvoir:

"When I started writing — it wasn’t exactly memoirs, but an essay on myself—I realized that I needed first of all to situate myself as a woman. So first I studied what it meant to be a woman in the eyes of others, and that’s why I talked about the myths of woman as seen by men; then I realized it was necessary to go deeper to the heart of reality, and that is why I studied physiology, history, and the evolution of the female condition."