Dancers in a thousand different positions. Women who comb their hair with their backs to us, one with an arm like that, another with an arm like that. Men near, men far, dressed in brightly colored coats and leaning over racehorses. Each painting by Degas seems to be a tribute to the human body, from a new angle and in a new light.
Halévy was therefore surprised to learn that the painter was working on a series of landscapes without figures. Intrigued by the news, he told his friend: “Alain wrote that landscapes are states of the soul. Does this seem like a good joke to you? Maybe I was expecting a complex theory about art and psychology. Or perhaps it was a statement full of pride, coming from an artist eager to leave his mark on the stupid silence of things. Degas responded: “Ecular states. We don’t use such pretentious language here.”
The story clearly highlights the importance that observation had for the artist who offered us wonders such as Woman with chrysanthemums and ballerinas. The biographical stories present us with a man fascinated by the visual matter of life, devoted to the careful observation of shapes and colors. Before attacking the canvas with his own mode of expression, Degas paused in front of the specific objects he wanted to paint, trying to absorb, in that prolonged contact, the details of the mysterious charm that reached his eyes – with a certain shyness in the relationship. -. to the possibility of ruining everything with affected personal idiosyncrasies.
This attitude should not be confused with a naive pretense of objectivity. Degas was irritated by the dogmas of his impressionist friends, for whom it was obligatory to paint “from nature” and respect the dictates of impressions. Against purism of this type he defended the fury of imagination and artifice. If I had to summarize the greatness of Degas’ painting, I would say that it lies at the intersection between the meticulous admiration of reality and a very free understanding of the autonomy of painting, illuminated by the dreamlike propensity of his personality. A mixture that reaches its splendor in those dancer pastels in which the fixation of a banal moment – the girl waiting for the rehearsal to begin, the girl bending down to put on her shoes – seems to drag us to a more sublime dream. than all the dreams we ever had.
But the relevant point here is different: realist, impressionist or fantasist, Degas had a kind of primordial respect for the configuration of things before him. A reverence for the material spectacle of the world, which served as a starting point for the creative gesture. It is because of this humility of outlook that, although Degas was a born experimenter, always willing to risk different points of view and techniques, we do not usually find in his works the label of originality forgotten outside.
I have been thinking about Degas when I realized the excess of self-affirmation that characterizes our time. The desire to show has surpassed the desire to see, and it seems there is a long way to go. There is no need to repeat, in this regard, the speech against social networks. A morning in traffic also serves to understand how cities today resemble maddened temples, where there is no shortage of prophets announcing their inspired truths. We turn on the radio and, among various announcers, singers and commentators, a continuous bass of confident opinions about the mysteries of existence enters our ears. Then we look out and, through the window, successive billboards They have orders to give us, like at a fair where auctions not only suggest what to buy, but how to live. I don’t want to oversimplify. I don’t want to sound apocalyptic either. But there is something strange in a society so rich in existential models, which at the same time makes no distinctions of quality and ignores the demand for precision.
François Fosca says that Degas’s last years were sad because the progressive loss of his vision prevented him from his favorite activities: carefully observing the shapes of the world and painting. He walked aimlessly, drifting through the avenues of Paris, on the verge of some accident. On the contrary, our times seem very enthusiastic about the possibility of speaking without seeing, of publishing before knowing, in a desire for self-affirmation that may have some traumatic origin.
What impresses me about Degas is the fact that he assumed this attitude of serene resistance without fleeing the city, without taking refuge in protected environments, immersed head to toe in the bustle of Parisian bohemia. Eyes open in the heart of the cacophony. Curious eyes despite the will-o’-the-wisp. As an admirer would do in the 19th century, I take my hat off to you, Mr. Degas.
The author writes according to the old spelling agreement.
Source: Observadora
