“Yellow Dancers (in the wings)


(The DIA presents a unique view of one of the world’s most beloved artists. Degas and the Dance assembles works from 97 collections, spanning eleven countries. The exhibition covers the artist’s entire career and the various media he employed. Displayed in conjunction with elements from the dance world, the show provides a context for a behind the scenes look at Degas’ creative process. From October 20, 2002 to January 12, 2003. The DIA is open for extended hours: 10 a.m.- 6 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 10 a.m.- 9 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 10 a.m.- 8 p.m. Sunday. Detroit Institute of Arts, 5200 Woodward Avenue, www.dia.org (313) 833 - 7900.)


Claudia Shepard special to thedetroiter.com.


For ten years, Edgar Degas - “the painter of dancers” - hung out at the Paris Opera – sometimes in the rehearsal rooms, sometimes at performances. It is said that he once saw the same opera 37 times. He observed the audience as well as the dancers, even waiting in the wings during intermissions to observe the dancers’ meetings with the abonnés (wealthy patrons) who sometimes propositioned them.


In his own words, Degas was an artist “looking through the keyhole” observing the hardworking dancers as they rigorously honed their craft, then depicting the fatigue and pain brought on by intense rehearsals and practice. He observed them as they relaxed and even as they adjusted their costumes, fluffing their skirts and tutus.


Degas saw in his own craft a parallel to the dancers’ hard work behind the scenes – their repetitions of movement were mirrored by his own repetitions of gesture. He once said, “Make a drawing. Begin it again. Trace it and begin it again, then retrace it.” In ballet, there is an intense study of form, shape and gesture that can be constantly assessed and changed in the mirror until the essence of the movement is perfected. In much the same way, the artist responds to the gesture of the figures with his own expressive tools of line, color, texture, volume, and shape. Degas was a brilliant draftsman very much influenced by the line work of Ingres. He drew rapidly and from memory, a process immediate yet carefully calculated.




“Green Dancers”


Each gallery in the current exhibition at the DIA is a reflection of some aspect of the world of the ballet. In one gallery the museum has reproduced the size and feel of the rehearsal room - including the arched windows that allowed daylight to flood in and heighten the form of the dancers in their positions. This unique light created a complex diagonal flow through space, which Degas employed in a revolutionary way to give viewers a greater sense of depth.


Another gallery replicates a performance environment – the stage, complete with heavy velvet curtains. Here the paintings became a play of reality and illusion. In these, Degas was not just interested in the audience, or the ballet, but in “the perceptual and psychological territory where they meet.” Again, Degas uses a pictorial device of “pushing and pulling” space. This is most dramatic in a painting which features the dark shapes of a musician and the curve of a double bass in the foreground, forcing the viewer to look just ahead to the stunning white dress and dramatic lighting on the ballerina on stage.



“Dancers at the Barre”


Another small, mirrored gallery, provides an introduction to the vocabulary of ballet. With barres provided for support, and with help from diagrams on the floor, visitors can go through the five basic ballet positions. The gallery also features a display of toe shoes that explain the mechanics of these essential props.





Another gallery features a sampling of Degas’ figurative gestural studies, juxtaposed with Greek vases from the DIA’s own collection. When asked why he studied the ballet, Degas, a student of classical antiquity, said that that was the only place where he could see the movement of the Greeks: “In all societies, the movement of the body is the essence of the dance.” The exhibition also presents visitors with an opportunity to electronically flip through Degas’ sketchbooks.




“The Dance Class”


The last gallery – for me, the most exciting – is “Orgies of Color". Degas considered himself “a colorist with line.” He was an original colorist using “superheated colors–fiercely stroked” and was strongly influenced by the passionate gestural paintstrokes of Delacroix. The pictures here are from the end of Degas’ life, when his eyesight was failing and he no longer had access to the same models. The artist became interested in reworking earlier gestures to create new, more spatially complex compositions.


New levels of emotion and energy entered his work. He was now redesigning gestures of figures he had used elsewhere and massing color as never before. He engaged in a pictorial play involving compositional problems and the visual potential of different moments in the dancer’s day. Melancholic at the end, the elderly Degas exclaimed to a friend, “The Gods are dead, poetry alone is left to us, the last star in the night of chaos.”


SOURCES CONSULTED:
DEGAS AND THE DANCE (catalog of the show), by Jill DeVonyar and Richard Kendall

DEGAS, BEYOND IMPRESSIONISM, by Richard Kendall
“Degas….", Vanity Fair, October, 2002



Claudia Shepard is a painter who exhibits in the Detroit area. She holds both a BFA and MFA from Wayne State University and has been on the faculty at Wayne State University for ten years. Also an instructor for the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, Shepard does demonstrations and workshops for the DIA. She has done courtroom illustrations for Channel 7, Detroit, and CNN and illustrated a children’s book for Boyds Mills Press. She was a contributing writer for the late publication, GROUND-UP, which was a journal for and about Detroit artists.