Degas: Figures in Ertia

An art exhibit is a regular contest for our attentions – art’s attractions versus its distractions. It is contemporary fashion to design exhibitions with enough layers of rationalization that serious examinations of the art’s excellence or importance are pre-emptively deflected; and oddly, art we could expect to deliver the most punch commonly peers out at us through the highest stacks of defensive information. Extended labels, wall panels, reading cards, audio guides and docents crowd out the very art that they should be there to assist.

It is by now pretty much common knowledge that the Edgar Degas sculptures currently on exhibit in the AGA’s Poole Gallery are posthumously-cast editions of mostly non-extant, mostly wax originals, and that only one of the pieces was ever exhibited in its original non-bronze constitution during Degas’ lifetime. This information surely is germane to various academic –ologies, and students of art history should be concerned with scouring even the tiniest details of provenance for high accuracy, but I contend that delving into either tidbit diverts attention away from an appreciation of the things as they so stand. Fortunately, presuming one can avoid the pounce of an interpreter, the 40 or so bronzes in the show are beautiful enough, and carefully enough installed, that their allure is not much diminished by debates about authenticity or allegations of artistic intent.

The only impedance to clear viewing of the sculptures comes from a mundane source: plastic vitrines cause significant reflective and refractive interference. Within their encasements, many of the sculptures also find themselves situated among a gridlock of shadows that spotlights angle in through the pane joints. But the use of jewel cases is an unavoidable concession to critical museological functions. Bronze sculptures are durable objects, relatively speaking, but their patinas are sufficiently susceptible to the oils in a finger’s touch that putting 100 year old treasures under glass is a warranted concession: no less than when guarding against thieving or sneezing patrons.

The sculptures don’t suffer too badly for the ¼” plastic buffer though, as Degas’ human figures are generally most in focus between knee and collar-bone – there’s little need to look too closely for finer features. Despite extending from toepoint to fingertip, almost every sculpture is really more a concentrated study of the female torso. The appendages have been left relatively unworked, certainly not finished to the descriptive degree that the haunches have been fleshed out to; the extremities seem at times to have been grudgingly included as a mere suggestion of hands and feet and even heads. In most of the pieces this works out just fine. Subduing the intricate lineaments of an arabesque-ing dancer’s hands is an effective way to counter the dramatic outward gesticulation of her position – the eye is not caught and held at overly-fine details out on the periphery of the sculpture. Feet, when planted upon the ground, are as necessarily indistinct as a tree’s roots. Imperfectly formed heads tilt in approximate agreement with the pose but carry only faint facial expressions. All visual cues support the center of gravity, none distract from the bodily gesture.

"Little Dancer; Aged 14" is an obvious exception to all these particularities: no leotard wrinkle too insignificant to be rendered. This, the biggest sculpture in the exhibit, is adorned with a real tutu, a hair ribbon, and polychromed bodice and shoes. Although she cannot not qualify as the definitive Impressionist sculpture, she is nevertheless iconographic – a literal poster girl for Degas’ Impressionism. It may be hard to dislike her since "Little Dancer’s" disposition is that of ‘beguiling sweetie’. But the crux of the sculpture lies in how inert the metal feels mated to the ribbon and tutu (which looks to be rotting away before your very eyes). Overly detailed, long-fingered, large-palmed hands, laced together behind her back, are just more evidence of a disparity of parts in this sculpture. Cute as she may be, as a sculpture she is less than – a fraction of – the sum of her parts; she is the odd one out and late to the party.

Otherwise, the exhibition may be dually faulted in its selection and arrangement of dancers standing on one leg: too many, and all in rows. Chorus lines of arabesques and positioning dancers appear rather more like a flailing studio rehearsal than stage-ready choreography. Including even half as many dancers in the show would have magnified their poise. And poise, not motion, is the dominant theme of the 40 bronzes.

There is another sense in which the title of the exhibit, Figures in Motion, is a flawed premise: Degas’ intention may very well have been to capture in wax or plaster the flicker of a dancing ballerina or prancing horse (art historians love such tidy surmises) but no matter how they’re lit the bronze casts we have here stand oh so very stock still. Darkly patinaed sculptures provide high-contrast surfaces that cause an apparent gain in mass, such that guesses to heft might figure as greater than hollow bronze and maybe as much as solid lead. Viewers are from most available angles reduced to searching out silhouettes for accurate clues to each thing’s specific gravity and balance – its poise.

Moving back to the essence of any visual art exhibit, what about the sculptures that look just too good to simply read about, walk away from and forget. Which ones are the good ones? What’s good about them? I could select easily half of what’s in this exhibit to approve: “Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot”, “Woman Taken Unawares”, “Spanish Dance”, “Woman Seated in an Armchair Wiping Her Neck”, “The Tub”, “Picking Apples”, “Pregnant Woman”, all four riderless horses.

One sculpture stands out from the rest as it actually is a figural fragment. “Woman: Rubbing Her Back with a Sponge” is a thick, truncated torso with certain brazing seams left visible (as is a regular feature of Rodin bronzes). It has a single skinny arm, which does not from most viewing angles wholly belong with the modeled logic in the rest of the body. The arm might reasonably have been shortened to a stub, but because its cocked elbow acts as a starboard jib, loss of the arm would likely diminish the sculpture’s expressive twist and intriguing contours. The relationship between this lone de-limbed piece and the rest of the be-limbed dancers lies in a taut bit of balance. The torso appears to be quite over-weighted to the rear, almost as if, should the lower portion be restored, the figure would be kneeling.

“The Tub” is another unique piece; its configuration landing it in some grey zone between the ranks of ‘sculpture in the round’ and ‘sculptural high relief’. The girl reclining in an half-empty/half-full bath seems the greater part of a whole figure, but upon inspection is made almost entirely of limbs. This may be the only sculpture in the show in which the figure’s limbs are up for consideration, but not its torso. The tub’s rim is a natural framing device that reinforces the tub water’s flattening force resulting in a 3d sculpture that emerges from, somewhat at odds with, its 2d ground – a tension that is only exacerbated by the decorative (art deco?) bronze slab that the whole thing rests upon. In a sense, its worth as an artwork lies in its embodiment of contradiction and exploration of semantical space.

Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot

There are sculptures in Degas: Figures In Motion that do not depict poise so much as describe an instant of inertia: the pent up energy of potential motion. “Picking Apples” is a gleeful, off balance dance of life that only remotely depicts its titular subject matter. Perhaps recalling the days when she was the agile “Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot”, the “Pregnant Woman” cannot now lean forward far enough to see even the tops of her toes. The “Woman Taken Unawares” is wildly indecisive and caught, psychologically as much as physically, between demureness and demurring.

Woman Taken Unawares

It is of course the equestrian sculptures that are most suggestive of motion. Each of the riderless horses has one or two special sculptural traits that set it off from the others. One, with a wonderful muzzle modeled by only a couple pinches in the wax, rears upon wire armatures unadorned with hooves. Another has an exaggerated neck and narrowness of shoulders that emphasise its side view: serving as a portrait of a remarkable, memorable horse friend. The one with no neck at all (only its twisted-wire armature holds a down-turned head in place) seems to carry a cumbrously affective yoke upon its shoulders. Smeared daubs of wax that evince surefooted horse hooves equate directly to Degas’ treatment of the dancers’ light feet, but at so much smaller a scale the effect draws rather more attention to itself, to the light canter of the animal, and away from any of the top-heaviness apparent in an unmoving horse.

It is art historians’ place to know by whose hand(s) these things were made, to whom attributions should refer, and in what regard. A handsome hardcover catalogue raisonné accompanies Degas: Figures in Motion; its scholarship regarding the serialization of Degas’ works seems comprehensive. What may never be agreed upon is whether displaying artworks that were never intended by the artist to be exhibited constitutes a moral dilemma. In any event, not only is a deceased artist’s mind unknowable, those responsible for casting the things have passed away by now as well – unless our great museums are to be implicated in illicit duplication of the things, there can be no one left to prosecute.

Given the quality of even this remnant of Degas-derived sculpture, surely no one will disagree that it is a special thing that his originals were salvaged for sharing with the world. Dubious of origin or not, they are very fine things worthy of conservation and exhibition. The breadth of Degas’ sculptural explorations, a mode of art-making for which he is not best known, is instructive – I find that it sets the bar for a committed sculptor very high indeed. Inspirational stuff. My congratulations and thanks to the AGA for bringing this show to town and displaying it to benefit.