{"id":879,"date":"2008-09-03T14:06:41","date_gmt":"2008-09-03T21:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/09\/879\/"},"modified":"2008-09-07T10:07:17","modified_gmt":"2008-09-07T17:07:17","slug":"879","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/09\/03\/879\/","title":{"rendered":"Degas’ Dancers"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the New York Times<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

DANCE<\/nyt_kicker><\/p>\n

Degas\u2019s Ballet Students Teach the Lessons of Their Art<\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

Librado Romero\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

Visitors with \u201cThe Little 14-Year-Old Dancer,\u201d a bronze by Edgar Degas, from about 1880, at the Metropolitan Museum. The galleries have two depictions of her.\u00a0More Photos><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/nyt_byline><\/span><\/p>\n

By\u00a0ALASTAIR MACAULAY<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1955 the art historian Kenneth Clark was visiting a museum in Copenhagen with Ninette de Valois, the artistic director of the\u00a0Royal Ballet<\/a>\u00a0in Britain and the main architect of its style in the classroom. \u201cHow beautiful, \u201c Clark remarked as they were looking at paintings and statues of dancers by Degas. Soon he became aware of a severe expression on de Valois\u2019s face. Then she said, disapprovingly, \u201cLine!\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>That story returned to mind as I recently viewed the endlessly absorbing Degas ballet paintings and sculptures at the\u00a0Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even if you\u2019ve been looking at Degas ballet pictures for decades, it remains astonishing how few of his dancers are actually dancing. The rest are stretching, adjusting ribbons and costumes, waiting in the wings, resting, gossiping or watching what performing there is.<\/p>\n

By contrast, in Degas\u2019s 1890s paintings of Russian folk dancers, you can\u2019t miss that these women are all dancing. Their long sleeves and boots (Degas called this series \u201corgies of color\u201d) are another world from the Paris Opera ballet he had been depicting since 1870. (The Met<\/a>\u00a0has just one Russian dancer, from 1899.)<\/p>\n

The ballet pictures feature remarkably little pointwork. Even when it occurs, Degas sometimes obscures it. In \u201cThe Dance Class\u201d (1874), a single dancer is stepping onto point in attitude. Yet we can\u2019t quite see the clinching detail of her toe, for the tulle of another performer\u2019s skirt blocks our view.<\/p>\n

The proportion of dance content is higher in the room of Degas statues, which contains 25 bronzes of dancers. Most, interestingly, show models in the nude. And three depict women doing the same arabesque pench\u00e9e; each might have caused de Valois to exclaim, \u201cLine!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the New York Times DANCE Degas\u2019s Ballet Students Teach the Lessons of Their Art Librado Romero\/The New York Times Visitors with \u201cThe Little 14-Year-Old Dancer,\u201d a bronze by Edgar Degas, from about 1880, at the Metropolitan Museum. The galleries have two depictions of her.\u00a0More Photos> By\u00a0ALASTAIR MACAULAY In 1955 the art historian Kenneth Clark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}