Edgar Degas was one of the most prominent artists during the Impressionist Movement, although he preferred to be called a “Realist.” Throughout his career he focused on depicting the Opera and fleeting moments of modernity in France, but around 1880 his art underwent a radical change. From about age 50 and until his death, Degas focused primarily on the subject of dance and the female ballet figure. He employed different kinds of mediums to repetitively render the same forms. Creating multiple variants of figures in the same poses, he looked specifically at how the body reacted to the difficult demands of dance. He used these numerous studies, largely drawings, of these figures to then build larger compositions of dancers at the Opera on the outskirts of stages, preparing to perform, or at rehearsals.
Degas fixated on portraying the physical exertion, mundane movements, and ritualized labors that consumed the life of a dancer–making art out of the invisible labor that fed the luxury and entertainment of his modern viewers. On stage, the dancers displayed an illusion of graceful and effortless movements, as if the grand leaps and step sequences they completed required no strain or effort. Degas believed that this same kind of transcendence and deception was also present in the work of an artist. Invisible hours of repetitive and obsessive toil reside behind artworks that often project an illusion not just of forms and depicted realities, but also completeness and finality. Degas once told Henri Hertz, "Art is the same as artifice, that is to say something deceptive, it is necessary to give the impression of nature by false means, but it must appear true." The following pieces explore how Degas’ fascination with the labors of dancing figures parallel his obsessive and repetitive processes as an artist.
Edgar Degas, Dancer Stretching, ca. 1882–85, Pastel on paper, Kimbell Art Museum, Accession Number: AP 1968.04
This is possibly Degas’ most emotive drawing of a dancer and would have served as a draft for a larger composition. Rough, gestural strokes of pastel around the dancer and on her skirt create a sense of movement, contrasting the harsh contour lines of her body that emphasize the sharpness of her bent elbow, raised arm, and upturned chin. Cool tones also suggest a cold and harsh environment. The photographic, cropped quality of the piece cuts off the dancer’s legs and arm, drawing all attention to the despair on her face. An onlooker to one of these rehearsals wrote: "Some groan or moan, others gasp and cough, and yet others can barely support themselves, overcome, crushed, almost dead." This reality of the working conditions of the Opera rats, a name given to Parisian dancers, was invisible to modern culture yet took front stage as the obsessive subject in Degas’ work.
Edgar Degas, The Dancers, ca. 1900, Pastel and charcoal drawing on paper, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number: 64.165.1
This piece was revised by Degas in 1900 and sold to the dealer Ambroise Vollard in 1914. Degas likely would have used tracing paper to transfer these figure poses and compositions onto larger pieces, which would have then been refined and built up with pastel or oil paint. Though the drawing was refined, Degas still included the contours of charcoal lines in the dancers bodies and in the scratchy texture of the floor and walls. The pose of the figure reaching down to adjust her shoe is repeated in many other paintings and also in the sculpture Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot (Fourth State). The pose of the arabesque, seen in the figures towards the back of the room, was also extensively repeated in many of Degas’ other works, such as The Dance Class, Dancer in Green, and Dancers in White.
Edgar Degas, Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot (Fourth State), Edgar Degas,Cast by A.-A. Hébrard et Cie, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number: 29.100.377
More than 150 sculptures were found in Degas’ studio after his death in 1917. None of the sculptures were publicly exhibited, and were made out of wax and plastiline, a cheaper and more malleable material than beeswax. Around 1900, Degas allowed for this sculpture to be cast in plaster, despite his reluctance to create permanent reproductions of his work, and then it was later cast in bronze. Degas began to make sculptures as his eyesight was deteriorating. Interestingly, scholars believe that it was during this time that Degas most identified with the ritualized labors of dance as he was growing increasingly weary. The sculptures did not aid Degas in his compositions but rather served as a further exploration of the dancer's figure through a different medium. This same figure and pose can be seen in many of his prior paintings, such as The Dancers and Ballet Dancers.
Edgar Degas, Dressed Dancer at Rest, Hands Behind Her Back, Right Leg Forward (Second State), modeled possibly ca. 1895, cast 1920, bronze, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number: 29.100.392
In the later years of his life, Degas turned to sculpture to continue creating works that explored the demands placed upon the body of a dancer. In this sculpture the dancer supports her arched back with sharply bent elbows and her the weight of her skirt with a staggered leg stance. The dancer is depicted in an in-between stance, reckoning with the physical fatigue of her body and possibly preparing to continue dancing. This same pose of a dance figure is repeated in dozens of Degas’ paintings and drawings made in the last couple decades of his life, and he also completed an identical, nude variant of this same figure.
Edgar Degas, Dancers in the Wings, ca. 1900-5, Pastel on paper, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Accession Number: PD.50-2006
Degas created this piece using tracing paper, copying the same motif and pose also onto Three Dancers, another version of Dancers in the Wings, and Three Dancers in Salmon-Pink Skirts. Although likely done about ten years later, this piece also reflects a similar composition to Dancers, Green and Pink, in which a clumped and flattened group of dancers near a “tree.” The pose is also identical to Degas’ sculpture Dressed Dancer at Rest, Hands Behind Her Back, Right Leg Forward (Second State). He explored this pose and composition through numerous drawings and then later reproduced this same position of the tired body through sculpture. In this graphic-like drawing, the angularity and sharpness of the dancer’s bent elbows are emphasized through contour lines, suggesting a fragility in their stance as they recover from physical exertion.
Edgar Degas, Dancers, Pink and Green, ca.1890, Oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Accession Number: 29.100.42
The heavily built up layers of paint on this canvas reveal that Degas would have spent an extensive amount of time working on this piece, using both his fingers and a brush to apply pigments to the canvas in thick strokes. Dancers, Pink and Green is one of the strongest examples of Degas’ repetition of forms and compositions as he would have relied on a stock of earlier dance drawings and paintings. Degas also later painted an identical variant of this painting with dancers in blue rather than green. Degas invites us to look here at a group of ballerina’s during a performance; however, they are not on stage completing beautiful leaps and turns. Rather, he depicts them stretching and adjusting their hair in dresses, completing mundane movements as they prepare their bodies to enter back into the spotlight.
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