ASSC: Edgar Degas and the "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen"
sixty...@hotmail.com
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. It was a
great exhibition at what I believe is one of the finest art museums in the
US, and I gained a lot of insights that I think are worth sharing on ASSC.
From this exhibition I drew parallels between the world of the late 19th
century French ballet and the current world of strip clubs. Some of you may
find it fascinating; the rest of you will just wonder what ol’ Sixty’s been
toking.
The exhibition is closed now (it’s traveling to the Baltimore Museum of Art
where it will open October 4), but you can find out more about it at
<http://www.clark.williams.edu/degas.htm>. Much of the information in this
post comes from this and other web sites, and also from the book _Degas and
the Little Dancer_ by Richard Kendall (Yale Univeristy Press/Joslyn Art
Museum, 1998).
Degas’ "Little Dancer" was first exhibited at the Impressionist show of 1881
in Paris. She is a wax figure dressed in a silk bodice, gauze tutu, fabric
slippers, and a satin ribbon in her (real) hair wig. From this original
figure several bronze casts have been made which can be found today in many
public collections, such as the Clarke’s
<http://www.clark.williams.edu/degasld.htm>. Today the "Little Dancer" is
considered a masterpiece, but at the time of the Impressionist show it caused
a lot of controversy. Accustomed to representations that idealized human
forms, the public had mixed reactions to the graphic portrayal of an
adolescent dance student dressed in real clothing.
Today we may look at the sculpture and at Degas’ other famous works depicting
the ballet and think of them as pretty, graceful, charming. But looking
deeper at the social environment surrounding these works, we may see why the
"Little Dancer" was so shocking. Degas’ little dancer, as well as the
subjects of most of his other ballet works, was one of the pubescent ballet
students known as "rats." The "rats" were girls from poor families who
entered the Paris Opéra at the ages of seven or eight and spent ten or more
years in classes, training for the corps. And in the popular imagination of
the late 1800s (as documented in many contemporary cartoons and stories), the
"rats" were closely associated with prostitution.
Beginning in the 1850s, ballet was dominated by female dancers, after men had
historically been the principal performers. Attending the ballet,
specifically as a subscriber, was in fashion in Degas’ time. The
subscribers, typically wealthy middle-aged men, were commonly allowed behind
the scenes to watch the dancers practice. These encounters often resulted in
older men seeking sexual favors from younger dancers. Although this behavior
is usually downplayed in Degas’ works, the sometimes sinister presence of the
male "abonnés" (subscribers) is nevertheless prominent in many of his
paintings and sketches.
The "rich horny subscriber" motif (my phrase) is found in such works as:
- "In the Wings," ca. 1878-80, lithograph
- "In the Foyer," ca. 1876-77, monotype
- "Pauline and Virginie Conversing with Admirers," ca/ 1876-77, monotype
- "La classe de danse" (The Dancing class), ca.1873-75
http://sunsite.unc.edu/wm/paint/auth/degas/ballet/degas.classe-danse.jpg
Young dancers attending classes were usually accompanied by their mothers,
who acted as chaperones – either to protect their daughters from, or
introduce them to, the wealthy male subscribers who often watched.
"The Dance Class"
http://sunsite.unc.edu/wm/paint/auth/degas/ballet/degas.dance-class.jpg
A man seated on chair just off stage.
"Dancer on Stage" - 1878
http://www.tigtail.org/TVM/X2/b.Impressionism/degas_dancer_on_stage.1878.jpg
Dark figure in the wings, partially obscured.
"L'etoile [La danseuse sur la scene]" (The Star [Dancer on Stage]) 1878
http://sunsite.unc.edu/wm/paint/auth/degas/ballet/degas.etoile.jpg
- - -
So Degas’ choice of dwelling on a somewhat unsavory world for his art, the
world of young and presumably often poor and socially ambitious "rats" and
their male admirers, was scandalous for his time. The sense of controversy
is heightened even more, however, when we appreciate the physical attributes
of Degas’ Little Dancer and the context in which she was exhibited.
This was the era in which the "science" of physiognomy (interpreting a
person’s mental and moral characteristics by a reading of facial features)
was widely accepted. Degas originally exhibited his "Little Dancer" at the
1881 Impressionist show along with several drawings he had made during
courthouse proceedings of two notorious teenage murderers, both male, whose
sloping foreheads and sinister features Degas blatantly exaggerated (as we
can see from the police photographs collected in Kendall’s book), in order to
"convey flesh imprinted with all the stains of vice," as one contemporary
observer described his portraits of the criminals. While these truly ugly
sketches hardly disturbed gallery goers at the time, the "Little Dancer"
certainly did. She was "a flower of precocious depravity," whose face was
"marked by the hateful promise of every vice," right-wing critics charged.
Her jutting, cocky, unrefined physiognomy was, to Degas and his
contemporaries who believed in biological determinism, a sign of inferior
breeding that would ultimately lead to base character.
"Self-absorbed, the Little Dancer seemed 'bestial,'" Kendall writes, like the
murderers, "at once marked by base instincts and lacking the intelligence - or
higher consciousness--to temper them."
And she was, after all, a ballet dancer--one step away from a prostitute in
the minds of the public. For his model, Degas chose one of three sisters who
were all "rats." Their mother was a laundress, their father a tailor. In his
many preparatory drawings, Degas tinkered with the child's unremarkable
features "to achieve a Neanderthal-like appearance," Kendall writes. "Both in
fashioning and exhibiting his dancer, Degas played with and to the fears
surrounding prostitution."
Lots of parallels can be drawn here from the world of Degas’ dancers to the
modern world of strip clubs. I’ll let you think about them yourself, but here
are a couple of the most obvious:
- the popular perception of dancers as prostitutes vs. the more realistic
view that these are people endowed with physical attributes which they are
trying to use to make a living.
- the fascination with the idea of rich older men being "ruined" by young
dancers, and vice-versa.
- physical attributes as keys to a reading of character (in Degas’ time,
facial characteristics; today, body characteristics such as breasts and hair
color).
- the urge to shock.
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sixty...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
snip of masterful post.
Wonderfully done.
So, do you believe that Degas was bending the truth, exagerating the carnality
of the ballet? Is there evidence the dancers he painted and sculpted became
whores?
In our society the physically beautiful have a serious advantage over those of
us who are merely "average". When was the last time a beautiful woman went to
prison for a heinous crime? Or and Adonis?
--
Darrell