Friday, May 6, 2011
5/2 - 5/6
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Dancers at the Bar
Dancers at the Bar by Edgar Degas
By Mason Petancosta
Dancers at the Bar is an Impressionism art piece by Edgar Degas. It was created in the year 1900, and is made of charcoal and pastel on tracing paper. At a superficial level it is literally two ballet dancers that appear to be stretching on a bar. However, much more can be observed about the piece with closer inspection.
First off, one odd thing about this painting is that it includes a large amount of dark green, and a little black. This is weird because those colors are earth colors and normally Impressionism has very little or no dark colors, but Degas is known for straying somewhat from the Impressionists. The two dancers both appear to be very different and have varying personalities. The woman to the right is hunched over and she is looking at her elevated foot. Her hunched position suggests that she is shy, inward, and even a little cowardly. This is quite opposite from the other woman. The woman to the left has a much more upright and proper posture. This position indicates that she carries herself well, is outgoing, and has a great deal of confidence. An interesting thing about the woman to left is that her hair color is almost the same as the walls. Degas could have done this to symbolize that it is that woman’s studio, or that she is the most talented of the dancers. The most interesting part of this piece is that the two dancers seem to be combined and almost look like one person. Their skirts are intertwined and it looks like one giant skirt. Both of the women have one leg up and one leg on the ground, so their other two legs coming out of the skirt look like they belong to one person. They almost look like one woman with two torsos. A reason that Degas painted the women this way could be to show that they are close friends, and that they are so emotionally connected that he painted them as one. (Edgar Degas Dancers at the Bar)Overall, Degas included a great deal of hidden information about these two women.
The main points of this painting are that the two women are distinctly different, that they seem to be friends, and they appear to be connected to one another. We cannot ask Degas what he meant for everything in his piece to mean or represent, but we can examine his art closely and try to infer what he intended and often times more.
Edgar Degas Dancers at the Bar. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2008, from The Amica Library .
Degas, E. (n.d.). Dancers at the Pole. Retrieved October 2008, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Edgar_Germain_Hilaire_Degas_072.jpg
The Bellelli Family
The Bellelli Family by Edgar Degas
By Mason Petrancota
The Bellelli Family is a portrait by Edger Degas of the Bellelli family, to which he was related. The painting is of a family of four who have just returned from their grandfather’s funeral, and he was Degas’ grandfather as well. A wide variety of emotions can be seen in this piece through closer examination.
The family appears to be in a row, but some believe the scene is too telling to be true and that Degas had arranged them into a diagram of family relationships. The poses are too perfect to be natural, and it is obvious Degas carefully positioned them, which is an odd thing for an Impressionist artist to do. The woman in the left of the painting is Laura Bellelli, who is Degas’ aunt and the daughter of the deceased. She is the dominant figure in the painting and she shows her dominance by standing fully upright, her head is high, and her face is set. To the right of Laura is a portrait of the deceased grandfather, and is a real portrait by Degas. Laura’s husband, Gennaro, the man to the right is at the edge of the frame. His body is not facing the viewer, and he barely appears to be part of his family. This shows a divisional break between the father and the rest of the family. The daughter’s emotions and the daughters themselves are very contradicting of each other. Giulia is the daughter that is standing with her mother. She is standing upright with her feet and her hands together, and she can be interpreted to be a subsection of her mother. The other daughter Giovanna quite oppositely sitting center stage and looks very independent even devilish or brat like. She looks very fidgety and is in a somewhat of a show off pose. An interesting observation is that Giovanna’s face is exactly that of her mothers. They have the same hair style, hair color, same expression, are facing the viewer the same way, and they seem to be the stronger characters in this painting. Meanwhile, Giulia and Gennaro are linked by their red hair, and are the weaker two of the family. Another fascinating insight about this portrait is that nobody in the family is making eye contact with one another. Giulia is intriguingly looking directly at the viewer, and it has been interpreted that she is looking at Degas with a “get me out of here” expression on her face.
Throughout the painting there are many feelings that can be observed that are felt by the family members towards one another. This painting portrays how the family is very torn and disconnected. It may simply look like only a family portrait, but by taking a close look you can see a great deal of hidden meaning in the piece, whether Degas intended it to be there or not.
Kostenevich, A. G. (n.d.). Edgar Degas The Bellelli Family. Retrieved October 2008, from The State Hermitage Museum : http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/04/2006/hm4_1_145.html
Degas, E. (n.d.). Edgar Degas The Bellelli Family. Retrieved October 2008, from Olga's Gallery : http://www.abcgallery.com/D/degas/degas4.html
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas by: Mason Petrancosta
Degas was the first of the Impressionists to achieve public acclaim. That can be attributed to the fact that his works were clearer, and less distant from the mainstream. In the early 1960’s Degas developed an attraction to painting theatrical subjects, and he would try to depict his subjects as he saw them in theaters, cafes, music halls, rehearsal halls, drawing rooms, or boudoirs. Degas frequently focused his works around horse races, women bathing, and ballet dancers. Degas loved to observe humanity, and he would try to depict his subjects in natural spontaneous poses, much like photographs did. (Edgar Degas, 2008) (Cooper)However, the poses in his art were far from spontaneous. Unlike most Impressionists, Degas made many sketches before he started to paint, and he would carefully consider the gesture, poses, and the placement of each figure. Degas varied in a many other ways from many Impressionists. For one, he hated working outdoors, and instead preferred to work inside his studio, in fact in his later years he would paint many of the dancers in his pieces from memory. He had almost no interest in landscapes, but instead concentrated on the human figure. The biggest way he differed from traditional Impressionists was that he lacked a fascination with natural light and its effects. Degas also tried experimental techniques. One of these was that he would paint combining pastels and tempera paint. He increasingly used pastels, especially starting in the late 1880’s. This was because he started going blind around that time, and pastels were easier to use than oil paint. As his eyesight continued to decline he started to make sculptures from wax, often focusing on his usual subjects. Wax was easy for him to work with because it is a very malleable substance. Some of his wax sculptures were cast in bronze after his death in 1917.
Edgar Degas is one of the most acclaimed and well known of the Impressionists. Throughout his life he managed to create countless masterpieces. Many of his art pieces are still enjoyed around the world today and most likely will continue to be.
Works Cited
Impressionism
Impressionism can be described as trying to capture the fleeting moment, and the optical sensation produced by the effect of weather, light, or movement. A commentator at an Impressionist exhibition in 1874 described Impressionism elegantly when he said, “…they render, not the landscape, but the sensation produced by the landscape” (National Gallery of Art). It was literally the mood, or impression the artists perceived of a setting. Impressionists commonly tried to incorporate movement into their paintings, and tried to paint people in spontaneous poses like photographs did. Impressionism has a variety of characteristic features. Rather than carefully mixing their colors to get a perfect shade, the Impressionists used unmixed colors. Impressionists would use broken brushstrokes of bright colors to make their pieces seem spontaneous. Doing these things caused their pieces to have densely textured surfaces instead of smooth even surfaces. Instead of painting historical paintings the Impressionists preferred to paint landscapes, informal portraits, and still life paintings. Most Impressionists painted outdoors, and they just painted what they saw. Impressionist painters would give liveliness to their brushstrokes making their artwork look spontaneous like a sketch. They also paint different colors on wet paint creating blurred contours and softened forms. In addition they tended not to use black or earth colors, and would use complementary colors for shadows. Another common technique they used was to use impasto, or thick dabs of paint rather than glazes, thin layers of paint. Famous Impressionist painters are Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro.
In the late 1880’s the Impressionist group began to break up, but in the 1890’s their paintings started to attract more buyers. Newer middle-class collectors who had fewer prejudices to art especially liked Impressionism. In all, Impressionism was a relatively short art movement in France, but did gain popularity in other parts of the world and has remained well known (Thomson, 2008) (Impressionism Overview) and popular.
Impressionism Overview. (n.d.). Retrieved October 2008, from National Gallery of Art: http://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/gg86/gg86-over1.html#jump
Thomson, B. (2008). Impressionism. Retrieved October 2008, from Microsoft Encata: http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761553672_2/Impressionism_(art).html#howtocite