Edgar Degas- "The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years"

"The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years" Degas, 1881

Edgar Degas was born in July of 1834 in Paris, France as the oldest child in his family. Degas' mother died when he was only 13 years old. He came from a wealthy family who wanted him to go into law. Even though he listened to them and did go to law school, he would often skip classes and take art class instead. But not long after, Degas knew that all he wanted to do was paint. Later he became known for painting dancers and ballerinas. Some people say that he always painted young dancers because he had somewhat of an "amorous liaison" with them, always laughing at what they had to say and "excusing them for all they do." But others think he was mainly seen as a misogynist. Later in his life (around 1871) Edgar Degas' eye sight began to slowly get worse and worse. But while his eyesight got worse, he increased the intensity in his paintings and made his art with more passion, like failing eyesight had motivated him to do even more. Degas was near blind by the last couple of years of his life, and by then was very isolated from the world. Wanting his death to be "unnoticed to the world," Degas died in September of 1917.

The piece of artwork I chose was a bronze sculpture done by him in his mid-thirties or so. The sculpture is of a fourteen year old girl who dances, and I'm pretty sure she's actually in the middle of a dance. When making this painting, Degas decided he would try something different rather than just paint like he usually did. This sculpture is modeled in wax and dressed in a real body suit, tulle skirt, stockings, shoes, and a horse hair wig.

I really like this sculpture because of the unusual elements he used to make it. Degas really went outside the boundary line of what people expected him to do, using wax and horse hair instead of oils and pastels. I read somewhere that Degas made sculptures like these because he wanted to "strip the dancers of glamour and reveal them as scrawny adolescents." This is believeable because Degas was known as a misogynist. He felt a somewhat hatred feeling towards women, and I guess wanted to expose them in any bad way possible. Even though in most of his other paintings the ballerinas all look beautiful, these sculptures are rough and harsh on the eye, and bring out a different side to the dancers that you wouldn't see right away. I think that with this sculpture Degas is trying to say that even though he's painted all of these wonderful pictures of pretty ballerinas in shows looking all perfect, this is how everyone is in the real world. He's trying to say that this is the real thing underneath everyone. This little dancer still looks beautiful, but it's raw beauty.




http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/edgardegas.html
http://www.mezzo-mondo.com/arts/mm/degas/degas.html
http://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Degas-Edgar.html