Dancers

As well as any other artist living at the turn of the century, what Degas wanted, like so many, was to have privileged access to an universe of models and from their immortalise then in paintings and drawings. However, what Degas ended up doing was to create a work where reality and fantasy blur as he' capture dances not only in motion, but also hurling themselves into impossible to sustain ballet positions. Degas and the Ballet: picturing movement brought by the Royal Academy of Arts combines Edgar Degas’s studies, drawings, paintings and sculptures from the body in movement – the ballet dancers – with Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey photographic studies of the human and animal figures in action. It helps us to understand the idea of movement at the end of the XIX century beginning of the XX century. The exhibition reflects a successive growing stage in ways of reading the turn of the century society vision, industrial developments and human-physical struggles - a conservative lay-out, as the RAA has already accustomed us. But for a society already in a very deep dive of ultrasonic speed and virtual connections, the're was something missing in the exhibition to make it more readable under contemporaneous eyes. The incredible aesthetic beauty of Degas’ pastels on paper and oils on canvas, with the choreographed actions, are inextricably linked to the fast pace of life at the threshold between the XIX and XX centuries. By the beginning of the 1910s the situation was changing dramatically: ballet dancers were no longer viewed as abused figures in society; the versatility of the photographic medium got better results, than traditional supports, such as paintings or drawings, in capturing the timeless conditions of being alive; film transformed modern society through a perception of perceived movement; while Degas’ work remained suspended in time. Cinema as already been substituted by virtual worlds and avatars. Away to far from the photography era.

«In the richest of his late pastels Degas seemed more concerned with evocation than description. Descended from one of his photographs, this spectacular work (...) remind us that ballet performances were inextricably linked with music. Rhythms, colour harmonies and elusive texture here belong to an innovative pictorial language.»

LEFT: Edgar Degas, Dancers, c. 1899. Pastel on tracing paper laid down on board. 588 x 463 mm. Princeton University Art Museum. Bequest of Henry K. Dick, Class of 1909. Image Bruce M. White

TOP RIGHT: Edgar Degas, Dancer Adjusting her Shoulder Strap, c. 1895-6. Modern print from gelatin dry plate negative. 180 x 130 mm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Image © Bibliothèque Nationale de France.