Antimony and Harmony

The advent of mass culture in the latter half of the 19th century accompanied, and was certainly indebted to, the rise of industrialization in much of Western Europe. These societies were now equipped with the technology to produce goods quickly, cheaply and in mass quantities such that old traditions and ways of life gave way to modernity.

Seurat's depictions of working-class people and other people (i.e. the inclusion of people outside of the élite and bourgeoisie) challenged the elitist implications of art and/or high art. The juxtaposition of working-class folks with higher-class folks created a sort of "antimony," perhaps under the guise of harmony (or is antimony harmony?). Beauty, according to Seurat, "arises from a continuous process of opposition and resolution among contrasting colors, values and lines." If we were to apply this concept of beauty to the paintings that juxtaposed people of "diverse classes," can we say that it constitutes harmony? Moreover, can we apply such a concept of antimonious harmony, in a work such as Chahut, in which, as one opinion goes, "the dancers experience the utopian delight of free and expressive movement while the audience is subjected to the dystopia of bad food and spirits, seedy surroundings, and lewd display." This characterization of the setting itself appears to be a criticism of the way that Seurat viewed mass culture; that is, this antinomy of mass culture and human individualism.