As a celebrated impressionist painter during the rise of the movement in the late 19th century, Edgar Degas gained a reputation for his ability to portray fleeting scenes with remarkable artistry. “They call me the painter of dancers. They don’t understand that the dancer has been for me a pretext for painting pretty fabrics and for rendering movement,” he once said.
In Degas’s Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint, the new gallery at the Phillips Collection, viewers can examine Degas’s paintings of ballerinas, an appropriate theme considering Degas dedicated more than 1500 works over four decades to the subject.
Contemplating the exhibition centerpiece, “Dancers at the Barre,” the viewer cannot help being struck by the painting’s simplicity; the dancers lack defining facial features and are set against a flat orange backdrop while they do the basic warm-up stretches required of every dancer. In many ways, it is one of the more simply impressionistic pieces of the collection, yet it is this simplicity that makes it unique.
Degas’s intense attention to detail and dedication to revision echo the discipline of rote and repetition in ballet, illustrating the close relationship between the artist and his subject.
Many of the motifs apparent in “Dancers at the Barre” recur in the collection’s other works. The play of light, color, shadow, and blurred contours can be found in the majority of his works, but the focus shifts in different paintings. In “Dancers” and “Dancers in Green and Yellow,” the viewer is drawn to the dancers’ perspective. They all look in one direction, inviting the notion that they are watching a performance themselves.
Degas further explores different themes in his use of various media, such as in his sculptures, with which he examines natural form in a three dimensional context. The two on display are distinct in that they depict relaxed, unaffected posture in contrast with the rigid, conditioned bearing of other subjects. Another medium, pastel, became a particular favorite of Degas during his later years for its vibrant colors and impressionist style. Such is apparent in “Dancers in Rose,” in which the blurred pink color becomes the dominant feature of the painting.
Arguably some of the most stunning works in the collection are his group studies. In “The Dance Class,” a remarkably complex work in which Degas incorporated 24 different dancers, there is a magnificent flurry of activity as the dancers are shown presumably preparing for class. The silhouette of the legs on the spiral staircase is particularly visually striking.
In another group study, “Dance Rehearsal,” daylight filters through the studio in a way that casts shadow on the dancers. In both “The Dance Class” and “Dance Rehearsal,” there is a sense of organic movement and activity that gives the viewer the sensation of being caught in a moment.
In the same way that Degas experimented with various media and multiple studies of the same subject, the designers of the exhibition explore the principles of his work from every possible angle. In addition to the paintings, drawings and sculpture on display, there are also contemporary photographs of ballet performances and a video of a performance of Swan Lake.
The most open attempt to echo the atmosphere of Degas’s paintings, however, is the addition of a room awash with natural light and filled with mirrors and a ballet barre. A glimpse of “Dancers at the Barre” can be seen through the mirror, inviting the viewer to fall into Degas’s impressionistic world that the gallery so effectively brings to life.
