Raising the Barre: Fifty Years of Dance

‘Degas and the Dance’ at the Philadelphia Museum of Art shows just how controversial the Impressionist was in his day.

By: Daniel Shearer
   Nearly seven years in the making, Degas and the Dance, the expansive new exhibit unveiled just in time for Valentine’s Day at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, pays homage to Edgar Degas’ longstanding fascination with the ballet world.

"Dancer on Stage," right, by Edgar Degas, is part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s exhibit on the Impressionist, whose work has been described as an orgy of color. ""

   The show brings together work from nearly 50 cities around the world, from public and private collections, and very likely will be the only attempt of its kind for decades. Organizers bill it as the largest number of the artist’s dance images ever exhibited together, a magnificent achievement considering that it provides an in-depth examination of Degas’ favorite subject.
   "Dance, the ballet, was the great theme of Degas’ career," says guest curator Richard Kendall, speaking to a large crowd at the press opening. Along with Jill DeVonyar, a ballet dancer turned art historian, Mr. Kendall co-authored the exhibit’s 300-page companion book and helped organize the show, a joint project of the American Federation of the Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts, where the exhibit premiered in October.
   "He had a long working life, born 1834, died 1917, and the dance theme runs for almost 50 years of his career," Mr. Kendall says. "It accounts for more than 50 percent of his entire output as an artist. This was an obsession. The man was crazy about the ballet."
   Unfolding according to dance-related themes, the show displays work done in practice rooms, where Degas spent hours making sketches, drawing many poses in painstaking detail. The exhibit even delves into the archives of the Paris Opéra to identify specific productions that appear in Degas’ work, displaying them alongside original costume designs and stage models. Researchers went to great lengths to identify specific individuals, presenting some of the works with accompanying photographs.

"" "The Ballet Class," left.










"The Dance Lesson," below.

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   "We thought we would introduce you to the dancers Degas knew," Ms. DeVonyar says. "As Richard and I discovered, he knew nearly 50 dancers at the Paris Opéra. Some of them were students, young girls who would come to his studio to model. Other times, a few of the older dancers, more accomplished, some stars he actually socialized with."
   Viewers encounter three portraits of one dancer, Madame Gaujelin, that have never before been exhibited together. Painted between 1867 and 1873, the portraits offer flirtatious and somber renderings of the same subject in chalk, oil and pastel.
   "(Gaujelin) was one of the first dancers that Degas painted, and when he did make these portraits, she wasn’t dancing anymore," Ms. DeVonyar says. "She agreed to put her tutu back on and pose for him as a dancer, long after she was out of practice, and you’ll see over there a drawing where she actually looks kind of awkward. She doesn’t look very much like the graceful ballerina anymore."
   The exhibit features works in many mediums, including etchings and lithographs, along with sculpture, one aspect that makes Degas unique among his Impressionist peers. Although Degas produced many small-scale wax figurines, he exhibited few of them publicly; none were cast during his lifetime. Nonetheless, in 1918, Degas’ heirs commissioned a Parisian founder to cast 73 of the waxes using a technique intended to save the original wax models.
   Perhaps the most famous of the exhibit’s sculpture, "Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen" was received with astonishment at the Impressionist Exhibition of 1881. Aside from the unorthodox nature of the work — semi-translucent wax with real hair and clothes — many viewers were surprised to learn that Degas had focused his attention not on a star of the ballet, but on an unknown adolescent dancer. At the time, puberty was not a subject for polite society.

Perhaps the most famous of the exhibit’s sculpture, "Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen," right, was received with astonishment at the Impressionist Exhibition of 1881. ""
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"Three Ballet Dancers," above.


   "Of course, in the 19th century, there weren’t many places where you could go and see women in this state of dress," Ms. DeVonyar says. "This is considered almost naked by the standards of the period. Women were literally covered head-to-foot in those days, and the ballet was one context that you can go and see women in this sort of demi-dress, and it was perfectly acceptable. And being an artist, of course that would give him access, because he’s very much interested in the body, to study the body as well."
   One of the big questions, and one that Ms. DeVonyar suggests will probably never be fully answered, is why. What led Degas to devote so much of his efforts to the ballet?
   "We can only speculate why," she says. "He came from a very musical family. His mother was supposed to have a beautiful voice, as did his sister. His father would have musicians come to their home and play… Degas was enamored with the opera, very involved with music."
   Born into an affluent family of Parisian bankers, Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1855, where he acquired the drawing techniques so visibly displayed in Philadelphia in sketches and pastels. The exhibit, in fact, has a bank of touch-sensitive computers that allows visitors to flip through Degas’ sketchbooks, viewing photographs and accompanying narratives. In 1860, Degas painted his classical nude, "Young Spartans Exercising," but in the following years shifted his interests toward depicting Parisian city life, possibly influenced by contemporaries like Édouard Manet, whom he met in 1862.
   Around 1870, when Degas was in his mid-30s, he painted one of his very first works depicting dancers, "Orchestra Musicians." The dark heads and hands of several string players is sharply contrasted by a light, Impressionist painting of several dancers on stage. The work occupies a position around the middle of the exhibit, near several stage models. Degas rarely painted the entire stage; in his later years, he would concentrate more on painting figures.

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Above, "Orchestra Musicians."


   Although Degas is often grouped with the Impressionists, unlike his contemporaries, he did much of his work indoors. He also worked in a much more calculated manner, with attention to symmetry in many drawings and grid patters visible in at least one of the show’s oils.
   Painted in 1874, "The Dance Class," an oil on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, shows a room bustling with typical ballet training. In the foreground, one student helps another adjust her tutu, while a silver-haired ballet master directs the action. Other figures appear in a classroom mirror, which also reflects the buildings from an unseen window.
   "What I think we can’t emphasize enough, and this is quite a difficult thing to get your head around, is that a picture like (The Dance Class), when it first appeared, was utterly radical," Mr. Kendall says. "When Degas first showed pictures like this in the Impressionist exhibitions from the 1870s onward, Degas was a very controversial artist.
   "And I use the analogy again and again, but I think it’s correct: He was like Andy Warhol. The subjects he chose, sex, half-naked bodies, the modern popular entertainment. This is just like the movies in Degas’ day. He was using new techniques, bright colors.
   "This is breaking all the rules of art, and we’ve learned to sort of settle to Degas and think of him as a familiar comfortable figure, but he was right there on the cutting edge in the 1880s."
   As Degas gets older, the exhibit attempts to show what Mr. Kendall calls "the shift in emphasis," as the artist, no longer interested in stage references, scenery or spotlights, concentrates his efforts on individual dancers. Among these is a spare oil, "Dancers at the Barre," circa 1900, one of the last paintings before the exit. Degas had referred to his works from this time as "Orgies of Color."

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"Dancer with Bouquets," above.


   "This is Degas, the elderly artist, in the final phase of his career," Mr. Kendall says. "Still painting dancers, still painting the dance. The obsession hasn’t gone… Color becomes one of the great obsessions of this very obsessive artists in his last phase.
   "We think that he was spurred on by some of his younger colleagues, people like Paul Gauguin, for example, to really push color further than it has ever been before."
   Mr. Kendall points out that "Dancers at the Barre" depicts two dancers in an everyday scene, sweating at the barre, day after day.
   "Look at their bodies wracked with exercise," he says, "straining to attain these positions. But it’s also a fabulous work of art. It’s also a picture about what happens when you put orange and turquoise blue together. It’s a picture about what happens when a diagonal is confronted with a vertical. It’s a truly modern work of art, and if I tell you that this was painted between 1900 and 1905, and you think for a moment about your art history and who was in Paris at the time, a block or two away from Degas’ studio was the young Picasso, just beginning to rev his engines up. A little further away was the studio of Matisse.
   "And here is Degas, who by this time was approaching 70, painting pictures based on the dance, which are as daring, as shocking as anything these young people were doing. Here, we see him, as it were, at the launching pad of the great experiment of modern art."
Degas and the Dance is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street, Philadelphia, through May 11. Exhibition hours: Tues., Thurs., Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Wed., Fri. 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Also open Feb. 17, April 21 and May 5, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tickets cost $20; seniors, students with I.D. and ages 13-17, $17; ages 5-12 $10; free under age. Tickets allow admission for a specific date and time. Discounted weekday tickets available for 3 and 3:30 p.m. viewings. $3 service charge for tickets purchase by telephone and Internet. For tickets, call (215) 235-7469.
Lectures in the Van Pelt Auditorium: Degas and Philadelphia: More than You Might Think, Joseph J. Rishel, Feb. 28, 7:30 p.m.; Degas and the Dance, Jill DeVonyar, Richard Kendell, March 14, 7:30 p.m.; Degas/Dance/Drawing, George Shackelford, March 21, 7:30 p.m.; Dancers, Doubles and Degas: Transfiguring the Body in 19th Century Ballet, Sarah Kennel, March 28, 7:30 p.m. Lectures cost $10 after museum admission. For information, call (215) 763-8100. On the Web: www.philamuseum.org