French impressionist painter Edgar Degas created many pastels dedicated to ballet and ballerinas: a true hymn to their beauty and grace, still delighting all lovers of painting.
Blue dancers
He was amazingly successful in depicting their graceful movements during the dance, and the trademark impressionist moment here and now, and the peculiar construction of the composition, reminiscent of a camera shot, allow you to visualize how ballerinas danced, rehearsed, or even just engaged in personal hygiene. Degas often hired models to “wash their asses”, as they admitted, while he “sits and sketches everything thoroughly”.
Bathtub
But the artwork “Little Dancer” stands apart. This is not Degas's favorite pastel drawing, but a statuette of a 14-year-old girl who has her head held high and her arms crossed behind her back. One senses in this pose a certain defiance and extreme reluctance to do anything she is forced to do, and one suspects it is by no means harmless dancing and rehearsing. We will talk about the tragic story behind the creation of this sculpture in this article.
Left: Edgar Degas. The Little Dancer, created from beeswax in 1878-81. Right: The Little Dancer, cast in bronze by Degas's heirs in 1922.
Looking at this statuette, one gets the impression that the girl must be unhappy, and the statuette itself, even though Degas remodeled it many times, leaves a strange impression. The girl's face expresses defiance, her features are distorted, and it is not the usual teenage rebellion. Her posture is somehow unnatural, as if she were standing in front of someone trying to evaluate her, and clearly not a strict examination board.
However, the press, when Degas first presented this statuette, was more categorical: “a rat”, “a victim of early depravity”, “a clear illustration of the degeneration of modern mores”. The statuette left no one indifferent, and the reaction was so harsh that Degas henceforth forbade to exhibit his sculptures at all, preferring relatively innocuous pastels.
Resting dancer
By the way, Degas made the statue from wax, clay, rope, metal armature serving as a frame, old paint brushes, dressed her in a muslin tutu and satin shoes, and attached a wig of human hair to her head. It is not exhibited now, as its condition is deplorable, but later several bronze copies were cast by Degas's heirs.
A diagram of Edgar Degas's original sculpture “Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer” (1878-1881) was made of.
In the nineteenth century, ballet also had its dark side. It was not only an exquisite entertainment of those wishing to join the “high art”, but also an elite brothel. Ballerinas were often recruited from poor families and social strata, it was a real chance to make their way in the people, but everything had to be paid for.
Young girls along with the art of dance usually found a rich patron. The foyer of the Paris Opera, the Foyer de la Danse, became a kind of exhibition place where rich visitors picked up a ballerina, and not at all for dancing.
A dancer posing for a photographer
On the lowest rung stood just such girls from poor families, who just started to seriously engage in dance and have not yet shown themselves in any way. They had to unconditionally give in to any wishes of “ballet lovers”, endure hours of grueling rehearsals and endure the disparaging nickname “rats”. Sometimes they stole to make ends meet, and any purse or watch left unattended would allow them to live comfortably for a very long time. But the ballet-goers kept a close eye on their valuables, and such chances were rare.
Four etudes of a dancer. 1878-79
Degas depicted the girl's clearly degenerate facial features, as if he wanted to show how far she was not at all far removed from an ape and to emphasize her low social standing. Cesare Lombroso's theory of the relationship between facial features and social responsibility was prevalent at the time, and Degas decided to visualize it in his statuette. So the sculpture is not just a depiction of a young girl, but a social commentary, albeit probably a somewhat flawed one.
Indecent dancing, nudism and escape from war. How famous artists vacationed.
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