EDGAR DEGAS (French, 1834-1917). A superb draftsman (I was truly amazed upon first seeing Degas’ pastels in person), and master at depicting movement in a still image. He imbued modern subject matter with the traditional methods of a classical painter, creating impressive series of bathing women, laundry workers, horses and their riders, female nudes, and women combing their hair. But he’s most famous for his paintings and drawings of ballerinas (in fact, over half of his oeuvre depicts dancers).
Now that time has passed, we view his ballerinas as precious, lovely images celebrating dancers and dancing. However, at the time, the French ballet was no longer considered a high art form, and so there were no “great dancers” to speak of. On the contrary, Degas was portraying a reality and brutality of the working life of un-beautiful, sweating, stressed young girls who began dancing as young as age eight, for a a grueling ten to twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week; their muscles curled or extended into contorted, agonizing discomfort as they stretch or dance, their feet raw and bleeding, many of them upon reaching “sexual maturity” at age 13, prostituting themselves to the ogling men waiting in the wings, for a pittance.
Degas was a conservative; his work evidenced feelings of anti-semitism, and he was a celibate and lifelong bachelor as a result of his misogynistic views of women (he refered to his ballerina models as “little monkeys” or “little rats” because rats were believed to transmit syphilis). His works were viewed with admiration for his draftsmanship, as well as contempt for their “ugliness” (Degas believed in pysiognamy, which claimed degenerate behavior and criminality were determinable by “primitive” physical features, and thus he purposely exaggerated his dancers’ features). He was a modernist in that he looked to the modern subject matter of everyday, realistic life and leisure and fashion of the newly industrializing cityscape. Although he is today considered one of the founders of Impressionism, he would have been appalled to have been told it, as he refused to associate himself with other styles.
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