"WE TOO CAN MINGLE WITH THE GODS"

ECONOMICALLY VICTORIOUS BUT SOCIALLY INSECURE, THE

NEWLY-RICH TAKE UP THE NOBLES' CODE

The Opéra decor is the last flowering of an art that linked nobles with the gods:

Grand Staircase ceiling by Isodore Pils, 1865

The theater has two ceilings, the modern placed over the original:

• The original made the public feel itself among the gods on Mount Olympus (in 1874).

By Jules Lenepveu

• That we see now alludes to various operas, and has no tie with the rest of the decor (since 1964):

By Chagall, 1964

The Opéra's inauguration and the first Impressionist exhibit

take place in the same year (1874-5). Reactions then: 

• The Opéra decor is the highest expression of French art. 

• Impressionism is "unfinished" scribbling.

• Idealizing every-day people is "Communard."*

*Giving Renoir an official commission would threaten the young republic, says the President (Gambetta, in 1877).

-- My Father by Jean Renoir, 1962

  

   Dance at the Moulin de la Galette by Auguste Renoir, 1876 / zoom

 A generation later the middle class knows its victory definitive, and adopts a code of its own.

Deities and heroes of Antiquity vanish and young, handsome, happy, ordinary people idealize a different humanity, and announce our ads.

 So ends the respectable part of our visit. 

End of this section.

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Next section,
II.7.2.
Backers, sex and money