Out of the ballet studio

Edgar Degas’ images of ballet dancers are a touchstone of
early modern art familiar even to museum-phobic art-neophytes; his
paintings of young women have enjoyed iconic status for more than a
century.

Last week, the Getty Museum opened an exhibit of Degas’
work, “Degas at the Getty,” that offers an expanded
view of his prolific career. It will be on display through June
11.

The exhibit veers away from focusing on Degas’ beloved
dancers in favor of highlighting his lesser-known subjects of
bathers and common scenes from his everyday life. It also reveals
Degas’ innate talents of photography, portraiture and
sketching. The works displayed in the exhibit show his fascination
with the landscapes and personalities of modern existence.

Degas is most often associated with the Impressionist movement
because of his friendship with artists such as Edouard Manet and
his membership in the Societe Anonyme des Artistes, a
proto-Impressionist group of 19th century French artists.

Despite this association, Degas’ aim was to be a realist.
This desire to create true-to-life images is primarily manifested
in his interest in photography.

As his eyes started to fail him, Degas trained to be a
photographer to allow his lens to assume the job of his eyes. The
exhibit includes many photographs of the Halevy family,
Degas’ close friends whom he often photographed after dinners
at their home. The intimate scale and subject matter of the
photographs demonstrates how Degas translated his painting talents
to film and ultimately mastered his chosen genre of realism.

The exhibit also displays many of Degas’
seldom-appreciated preliminary sketches. These drafts, which often
served as blueprints for later works, allow viewers to more fully
appreciate the artist’s methods. Unlike many of his
impressionist contemporaries, Degas constantly revised his works
with the greater aim of creating realist, not impressionist,
art.

The pastel sketch of “Miss Lala at the Fernando
Circus” is an example of Degas’ work methods. The
displayed sketch was later used as the model for the completed
version of a panting which is now on display at The National
Gallery in London.

Degas’ revision process is perhaps best noted in his
painting of Parisian hatmakers, “The Milliners.” Degas
worked through multiple versions of these compositions, which art
historians have discovered by taking X-ray images of his paintings.
As a result, Degas’ work contains little spontaneity.

One of the exhibit’s most unexpected aspects is its
display of Degas’ sketchbook. The pencil drawings are his
spontaneous studies in light, gesture and character. His favorite
subjects (bathers, dancers and cabaret singers) are shown in the
quick compositions. The sketchbook is a testament to Degas’
fascination with personalities of his contemporary world.

Visitors discover the man behind the art in his self-portrait as
a young man. Painted while traveling in Italy, the composition
shows both the promise of his young, burgeoning talent and the
psychological realism characteristic of his work. Viewers can
relate to his distressed state as a young adult second-guessing his
future. His penetrating glance gives viewers a sense of his inner
strife and self-reflection upon his youth. Degas’ work is
given a genuine sense of modernity due primarily to the emotional
intensity he imparts to his characters.

Another notable aspect of the exhibit is the way it defies the
popular expectations of Degas’ work. Museum-goers may be
disappointed by the lack of Degas’ hallmark dance paintings
on display, as there is only one ballet-related piece,
“Waiting.”

Although the Getty exhibit is lacking in Degas’ well-known
ballet dancers, it offers an important, less recognized side of the
artist that will give viewers a new perspective on Degas and his
life’s work.

“”mdash; Catherine Moore