Degas’ Four Dancers

Degas style of art focuses on the dynamics of movement and expression, the harmony of line and continuity of contour (Pioch, “Webmuseum”) as is seen in The Four Dancers.

Although he is identified for nudes, dancers and horses, he began painting conventional historical works such as The Young Spartans, and portraits of individuals and groups like The Bellelli Family, which was in essence a painting of his aunt, her husband and their children.The painting talked about a marriage in which visible strains on the relationships among them could be observed. One will notice that most of his early artwork focuses on the conflict between men and women. Degas eventually moved on from historical and individual-group themes to those of contemporary life.

He began by painting horses and their riders during races, before going on to painting women at work, such as milliners and laundresses.One of his paintings in particular, Mlle. Fiocre in the Ballet La Source, which was exhibited in the Salon in 1868, was the beginning of what would become his preference for dancers as a painting thematic. Robert Hughes states in his critique of Degas, in relation to his ballet dancers strictly, that although Degas’ work has been of popular creed, Degas as an artist has not.

Degas was an artist much as Da vinci, for both men were observers of the world, since it was the arts which Degas dwelled his subject matter maintained the graceful curve of dancers, or the elegance of a nude, as Hughes states, "No passing remark could take you closer to the heart of nineteenth-century Realism: the idea of the artist as an engine for looking, a being whose destiny was to study what Balzac, in a title that declared its rebellion from the theological order of Dante's Divine Comedy, called La Comedie Humaine”Degas chief exhibitions can best be found with the term sensuality as mentioned prior which means that his body of work focused on a more communal assertion of art: that with the human body art transgresses through such presuppositions of ideals and into a classical avenue as held by the Greeks and Romans. The nudes and dancers which Degas so chronically painted or sculpted are elegant in line, and graceful because of their seemingly self involved occupation, the look on their faces, and their temperament of body positions.With these subjects in mind the development and concentration of personality involved and revealed in Degas’ work becomes apparent. Acknowledged as an expert at drawing the human figure in motion, Degas is also regarded as one of the founders of the Impressionist movement, though he adapted a disparaging attitude towards them as a group.

He was never observed as having adopted the Impressionist color fleck, and looked scornfully at their practice of painting en plein air (in the open air).Nevertheless, he is considered an Impressionist mainly because of the characteristics of his artistic pieces: scenes of Parisian life, off-center and open compositions and experiments with color and form. All these are notable traits of other Impressionist painters. Degas also maintained a close friendship with several key figures in the Impressionist movement during the early years of his life. Over the years, he became increasingly isolated from family and friends, as he held the philosophy that “a painter could have no personal life (Canaday 929). He continued his work until about 1912, until his quickly failing eyesight and the looming demolition of his main residence forced him to stop.

Many of his ensuing paintings would have dancers in rehearsal or performance scenes as in The Four Dancers, with the stress on their simply being professionals doing a job. As it is, Degas’ primary aim was to practice capturing human movement as naturally as those found in photographs.Since photography was also one of his private interests, this greatly challenged him. One of his paintings using this theme is The Four Dancers, which focused not on the dancers while in performance but during a pause in between. Degas is a contemporary artist as the French School of Art was less inclined toward the impressionistic art being developed by Degas, Monet, and Carter at the time. As Abuhamdeh, ; Csikszentmihalyi (2004) state of the artistic personality and contemporary art;Though it may have been adaptive at one point in history for artists to possess the traits associated with the archetypal “artistic personality” - introverted, nonconforming, socially aloof, and so forth - there is no reason to believe that these traits will continue to be adaptive, or even that they are adaptive in today’s art world.

Indeed, a longitudinal study conducted by Csikszentmihalyi (1976) suggests many of these traits are a recipe for failure in the contemporary art world. The state of most of Degas’ work has patterns of aloof characters which resemble Degas’ own personality.Again and again the viewer may witness how the subject matter is confident in their surroundings but the hint of interacting with that environment outside of the constructs of their movements is nil. Degas’ painting style though impressionistic and contemporary (keeping in mind the difference between contemporary and modern, the former coming prior to the latter) Degas’ style becomes distinct in line between his paintings and his sculpture. Degas works were known to have received many mixed reactions, ranging from high regard to disdain.Though this was the case, his pieces were still generally well-taken and accepted for the quality of the draftsmanship.

One of his most controversial sculptures was La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, or Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, which some lambasted for its ugliness while others praised it as a blossoming (Muehlig 7). With the change in themes, Degas’ artistic methods changed as well. From the use of dark palettes to utilizing vivid colors and bold, sweeping brushstrokes, his paintings took on a different feel altogether.Works of his like The Four Dancers came out as picture frames, with frozen periods of time to successfully denote movement. It should be noted that these changes all reflected the effects Impressionism and modern photography had on him.

Degas also had a penchant for unfinished paintings; he would initially blame his unfinished work due to his failing eyesight, though he also later admitted his tendency to “begin a hundred things and not finish one of them (Guillaud and Guillaud 50).A vested interest in portraiture also led him to study carefully how a person’s stature or employment could be learned through physiognomy, posture, clothes and so on. As an example, he would envision his ballerinas as those with “physicality and athletic physique,” while his laundresses would be “heavy and solid” (Muehlig 6). Degas also used photographic effects, where people and objects were cut by the edge of the image, on another of his favorite themes: horses. This was exhibited in his painting Carriage at the Races, where the galloping horses in the background represented modern movement.It would not be long before Degas would again return to a medium he had used before, that of etching.

He also experimented on non-traditional printmaking media, such as lithographs and experimental monotypes. Soon after, he not only sufficiently mastered oil on canvas but pastel painting as well, which allowed him to satisfy his desire for more expressive and vibrant colors. These changes allowed Degas yet again to experiment with another theme which would eventually become one of his more controversial decisions, the nudes.The ballet paintings of Degas featured women in a variety of intimate moments, so to speak.

It is at this point that after trying out a variety of techniques, mediums and themes that his work takes on a completely Impressionist image. Paintings done during his early years turn out to have little resemblance in terms of style and composition to the artwork he did later on. Nevertheless, certain features of Degas’ painting methods remained the same regardless of the many modifications and adaptations to this styles and mediums. For one, he always painted indoors.

This remains in effect a testament to his derision at the en plein air technique of the Impressionists; he would always prefer to work in his studio instead, relying on memory or live models for his paintings. This was what he did during some of his paintings on dancers, where he would get a female ballet dancer to act as a live model in his studio. His subject too, remained the primary focus, and the landscapes and background were simply reproduced from memory or created from his imagination. In the course of his life, reactions for Degas’ artistic pieces ranged from general approval to vocal criticism.Recognized as an important artist with many valuable contributions to the arts, he is now formally recognized as one of the founders of Impressionism. This recognition came about due to several inevitable factors that linked him inexorably to the movement.

Examples of these were his involvement with other Impressionists and their exhibitions, his style of painting everyday activities with dynamism and movement, and of course his experiments with various mediums and colors which eventually led him to the use of bold colors for his paintings as is seen in Four Dancers.While his paintings and sketches were widely publicized and critiqued even while he was alive, his sculptures did not receive much attention until his death, where they are now displayed in various museums and exhibits. Among the future artists and painters he influenced were Jean-Louis Forain, Mary Cassatt, Walter Sickert and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Guillaud and Guillaud 48). In general, one can say that aspects of Degas’ work carry an element of sensuality, perhaps even hyper-sensuality, in them especially during the paintings of the nudes.It is crucial to know that understanding this is important to be able to successfully analyze, comprehend and appreciate his other works. A blatant example of one of Degas’ works that has clear elements of sensuality is Four Dancers.

In this painting, Degas arouses a variety of sensual responses based on the primary visual image, to the eroticism exhibited by the female models. Degas did not only reveal his artistic and personal introversion through linear revelation but also through the use of color and light.The dancers stand in muted quite with earth tones while their outfits have small hints of brilliant color with blue or pink sashes. The stiff form of the skirt while a dancer is standing still and straight as can be witnessed in Four Dancers in the forefront dancer’s position is easily transformed into a fluid myriad of colors whenever a dancer takes movement and Degas reveals an asymmetry with color, line, and the imbalance of the two as can be witnessed in each of the previous mentioned paintings.

Degas’ philosophy of artists was that they could not have a personal life, but must dedicate themselves to their work.Again and again the audience discovers this phrase in the simple glide of the dancers on stage, their self-possession, and even later in Degas’ experimentation with nudes. With the discovery of the nudes, Degas’ work took an even more isolated turn. Hughes writes of Degas’ focus on the nude: Looking back from old age, Degas reflected that "perhaps I have thought about women as animals too much," but he had not - although he was certainly reproached for doing so.

His "keyhole" bathers provoked the crisis of the Ideal Nude, whose last great exponent had been the man Degas most revered, Ingres.Yet their exquisite clarity of profile could not have been achieved without Ingres's example. In them, the great synthesis between two approaches that, thirty years before, had been considered the opposed poles of French art - Ingres's classical line, Delacroix's Romantic color - is achieved. There is no clearer instance of the way in which true innovators, such as Degas, do not "destroy" the past (as the mythology of avant-gardism insisted): they amplify it. (Hughes). Edgar Degas’ painting Four Dancers carries with it much symbolism, and his paintings have much hidden messages and communication in the various strokes, colors and characters.

For the most part though, his most controversial works lie with the themes on the nude and the dancers, which received either much acclaim or disapproval. With some of his work, it is also clear that elements of sensuality are integrated, and thus it is of paramount importance that one understands the concept of sensuality in order to know and value the artwork involved. In the end, Degas was an important and key figure towards the development and furthering of the Impressionist movement, and his many works not only reflect this, but exceed the boundaries of artistic achievement and excellence.Although there is a common belief that Degas was a misogynist, his subjects of women as dancers can be more aptly described as being neither a positive or negative focus on women but merely his artistic means of expression, as Hughes states, "He had a reputation for misogyny, mainly because he rejected the hypocrisy about formal beauty embedded in the depilated Salon nudes of Bouguereau and Cabanel - ideal wax with little rosy nipples. "Why do you paint women so ugly, Monsieur Degas? " some hostess unwisely asked him.

Parce que la femme en general est laide, madame, " growled the old terror: "Because, madam, women in general are ugly. " Degas found an elegance and an aloneness in dancers and then later in nudes. This does not necessitate sentiments of hate towards females but rather the focus is on the impression Degas received when he gazes and later portrays the figures. They reveal to him an isolated fact of purpose, just as his art was for him. In Degas’ use of color, light, balance, and line, it is found that he used distinction not just impression.

Degas’ artistic temperament is found in his gray and blue colors which are matched with his flesh tones and heavy lines. Here a viewer may see a slight depression in the thick lines of The Tub but the viewer must also be aware of the subjects body position and how bent forward in such a state is a control of pain and body. Here is Degas’ pivotal elaboration of self; his control. Degas is an artist who followed his own mantra of painting.

Although he did not consider himself an Impressionist, and in fact rebuked their pointillism, he was not altogether unbeneficial to their movement.Degas was not a social person, as has been stated and critiqued through his work, he has given of himself to art history. His focus of the introverted and self-possessed dancer as a revelation of his own personality traits has been something by which to mark the progress of art as emotive. Degas created a tense filled canvas through the path of beauty, and that tension may best be described as something comparable to the Greek and Roman Hellenistic stage in which movement was becoming the staple: For Degas this movement was not an interchange but rather an individual’s expression of space as is witnessed best with his dancers.