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Fine Arts Friday: Tony Danza*

Degas-dancer 2

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is the artist for the third term on the Ambleside rotation. Most people are familiar with Degas’s paintings and sculptures, especially of dancers. His sculpture “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” has an interesting story. From the National Gallery of Art website:

The sculpture was not so warmly received when she first appeared. The critics protested almost unanimously that she was ugly, but had to acknowledge the work’s astonishing realism as well as its revolutionary nature. The mixed media of the Little Dancer, basically a wax statuette dressed in real clothes, was very innovative, most of all because she was considered a modern subject—a student dancer of the Paris Opera Ballet. Marie van Goethem, the model for the figure, was the daughter of a Belgian tailor and a laundress; her working–class background was typical of the Paris Opera school’s ballerinas. These dancers were known as “petits rats de l’opéra,” literally opera rats, presumably because of their scurrying around the opera stage in tiny, fast–moving steps. But the derogatory association of the name with dirt and poverty was also intentional. Young, pretty, and poor, the ballet students also were potential targets of male “protectors.” Degas understood the predicament of the Little Dancer—what the contemporary reviewer Joris–Karl Huysmans called her “terrible reality.” The Little Dancer is a very poignant, deeply felt work of art in which a little girl of fourteen, in spite of the difficult position in which she is placed, both physically and psychologically, struggles for a measure of dignity: her head is held high, though her arms and hands are uncomfortably stretched behind her back.

The works suggested by Ambleside Online are:

1. The Belleli Family, 1862
2. A Cotton Office in New Orleans 1873
3. The Dance Class, 1873-75
4. Place de la Concorde, 1875
5. The Little Dancer, sculpture; executed ca. 1880 or 1881; cast in 1922 (another view)
6. Before the Race, 1882-84
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(Links to image sources at Ambleside.)

A good biography for younger kids can be found at this great website (which I plan to explore more when/if I every have time.) For older students, this is a helpful background (note: there is a small image of a nude toward the bottom of the article.)

 

* For those who didn’t get the post title, here’s the reference. What can I say? You came to a website named “Oddly Said.”

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