INTRODUCTION This chapter presents a variety of evidence that a recently discovered plaster of Degas’ Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen (fig. 21) is, in fact, an authentic record of an earlier state of the famous wax sculpture (figs. 22–23) now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Recent radiographs and technical analysis of the original wax, combined with Degas’ preliminary drawings for his sculpture and critical comments about the condition of the sculpture after the artist’s death, plus new detailed photographs of a plaster in the Joslyn Art Museum that records what Degas’ wax looked like in 1920 –21, provide an extensive body of proof that the plaster does indeed record an earlier moment in the history of Degas’ famous sculpture.
Figure 21: Edgar Degas, Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, cast before 1903, plaster, front view, 39 in. (99.0 cm) high without base, private collection, United States.
Evidence indicates that after the Little Dancer plaster was cast, Degas extensively reworked his original wax, apparently starting in 1903. Differences between the plaster and the final wax version today are an important starting point to determine what was changed. The plaster records a different hairpiece at the back of the figure’s head and a different bodice. Physical and documentary evidence in this chapter indicates that late in life Degas, indeed, changed the figure’s pose, wig, and bodice. The likelihood that Degas reworked the Little Dancer wax at some point is revealed by radiographs of the wax. They clearly show that the hip and wig areas were reworked. The slightly lower shoulders of the plaster also corroborate a recent discovery that Degas raised the shoulders on his Little Dancer at some point by adding layers of wax. Comparisons of the plaster and the wax today to obser-
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Figures 22–23: Edgar Degas, Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, 1878–81 (later reworked), yellow wax, hair, ribbon, cotton faille bodice, satin shoes, muslin tutu, wood base, 38 15⁄16 in. (98.9 cm) high without base, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1999.80.28).
vations made by critics in 1881, as well as comments by the New York collector Louisine Havemeyer, artist Mary Cassatt, and Degas’ biographer Paul Lafond (1847–1918), also indicate that Degas reworked his sculpture. Why, when, and where Degas refurbished his wax is then discussed in a section containing a variety of documentation confirming Degas’ desire to refurbish his wax sculpture after Mrs. Havemeyer expressed an interest in buying it in 1903. There is also documentation that, after Mrs. Havemeyer’s visit, Degas moved the Little Dancer up to his third-floor working studio. A review of Degas’ working methods supports the likelihood that he later reworked the Little Dancer, as it is characteristic of the artist’s creative tendencies. Degas was a notorious perfectionist who frequently reworked his art, as examples from his paintings, prints, and other sculptures make clear.
Finally, art-historical assessments of the Egyptian-, doll-, and Madonna-like qualities of Degas’ Little Dancer align more with the unique qualities of the plaster than the wax today. The discovery of the plaster sheds new light on these earlier observations.
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Figures 82–85: Egyptian Large Limestone Figure of a Royal Lady, Later Ptolemaic Period, 2nd–1st century B.C.E., limestone, proper right side, left side, front, and rear views, 23 3⁄4 in. (60.3 cm) high, private collection. Figures 86–89: Edgar Degas, Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, cast before 1903, plaster, four views, private collection, United States.
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Figure 138 (upper left): Caspar David Friedrich, Woman before the Setting Sun, 1818–20, oil on canvas, 8 3⁄4 × 11 3⁄4 in. (22.0 × 30.0 cm), Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany (537). Figure 139 (left): Jean-François Millet, The Angélus, 1857–59, oil on canvas, 21 7⁄8 × 26 in. (55.5 × 66.0 cm), Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France (RF1877). Figure 140 (right): Jean-François Millet, The Peasant Family, 1871–72, oil on canvas, 43 1⁄2 × 31 8⁄9 in. (110.4 × 81.0 cm), National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, Wales (NMWA 2473).
Imbuing Figures with Spiritual Qualities Spiritualizing ordinary people by giving them symmetrical poses was another new trend during the nineteenth century that is reflected in the Little Dancer plaster. Rosenblum, in his study Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko, argues that the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) mark the beginning of an interest in the romantic and spiritual possibilities of art that continued into the twentieth century. In Friedrich’s Woman before the Setting Sun (fig. 138), the
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figure is given a balanced, four-sided pose, with level shoulders and hips, and placed in the center of the picture, thus giving the figure an otherworldly air as she contemplates the wonders of a sunset. Rosenblum observes that the “static figure, seen from behind and frozen into place by the starkly simple symmetries of the composition” contemplates “in quasi-religious stillness the mysteries of nature’s most commonplace daily dramas.”107 The spiritualizing, as well as ennobling, qualities of foursided poses can also be found in paintings by Jean-François Millet. A number of Millet’s depictions of simple peasants exhibit motionless, four-sided poses, particularly after 1850. Traditionally, when praying in Western societies or meditat-
ing in Eastern civilizations the worshipper adopts a symmetrical pose, with level shoulders and hips, and feet and hands together, whether standing, sitting, or bowing. Hence, a four-sided pose in itself implies for many a religious or spiritual moment. An illuminating example is Millet’s 1855–57 painting The Angélus (fig. 139), where a female peasant assumes a symmetrical pose while praying. Here, the four-sided pose is perfectly appropriate given the religious moment depicted.108 When a figure with a four-sided pose above the hips faces directly forward, it becomes an iconic pose. A rare example before the 1880s of such a pose being given to a lowly figure in the fine arts is a late painting by Millet, his
The Peasant Family from 1871–72 (fig. 140). Here, for the first time in his career, Millet turned his symmetrically posed figures fully forward. Bruce Laughton sees the painting as a “pseudo-iconic image of a Norman peasant family.”109 Along similar lines, Robert Herbert notes a “chunky primitivism” to the composition, “the result of a deliberate rejection of the refined tradition of French art.” Moreover, he sees religious overtones and an Egyptian quality to Millet’s figures. “The upright figures have a curious resemblance to saints that confront us in earlier altar-pieces,” he writes, adding, “we find a still closer resemblance to standing couples from Egyptian sculpture.”110 Foreshadowing Degas’ Little Dancer, Millet here elevated lowly figures by
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Figure 250 (left): Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930, oil on beaver board, 30 3 ⁄ 4 × 25 3 ⁄ 4 in. (78.0 × 65.3 cm), Friends of American Art Collection, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Ill. (1930.934). Figure 251 (right): John Kane, Self Portrait, 1929, oil on canvas over composition board, 36 1 ⁄ 8 × 27 1 ⁄ 8 in. (92.7 × 69.8 cm), Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund, Museum of Modern Art, New York (6.1939). Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, N.Y.
Painting: 1900–1950 As with Degas’ own later oeuvre, the contrapposto pose continued to dominate in European and American painting until 1950. From the 1920s to the 1940s, avant-garde thinking in Europe was dominated by the tenets of Surrealism, a movement that was, by its declared nature, organic, asymmetrical, and, hence, contrapposto in its aesthetic. In America, Social Realism, rather than Surrealism, was the leading style in the 1930s and 1940s. While the two movements hardly shared the same ethos, Social Realism’s inherently naturalistic aesthetic meant that the vast majority of American paintings of the period were filled with contrapposto poses. Thus, important painters as aesthetically diverse and geographically separate as Thomas Hart Benton (1889– 1975), Reginald Marsh (1889–1945), Salvador Dalí (1904– 1989), Pablo Picasso,31 and Henri Matisse—among many
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others—routinely gave nearly all of their figures complex contrapposto poses. There were, however, a few notable exceptions, particularly in American art. To cite perhaps the most famous example, in American Gothic (fig. 250) Grant Wood (1891– 1942) gave a frontal, symmetrical pose to his dentist posed as a Midwestern farmer, thereby creating an icon.32 Wood satirically elevated the subject of a provincial farmer by using an iconic pose, just as Degas had elevated his young dancer in 1881.33 The self-taught American painter John Kane (1860– 1934) used an iconic pose for his self-portrait (fig. 251), as Albrecht Dürer (fig. 126), Degas, and numerous other artists had done earlier.34 Diego Rivera (1886–1957), Joseph Stella (1877–1946), and Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986)35 all created iconic images. Like many works by Degas before 1880—see figures 149, 151–56, 161, and 166—Rivera in particular had a propensity for quiet, closed poses, akin to Italian Renaissance artists before 1500. When he gave a figure a frontal, symmetrical pose, it was typically, but not always, a figure of authority.36 In addition to symmetrical looming images of the Brooklyn Bridge, Stella’s 1925–26 painting A Vision (fig. 252) is an example of that artist giving a single, dominating figure a closed, nearly frontal, iconic pose. Like Munch and Hodler, Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) frequently gave his figures hieratic poses, Madawaska—
Acadian Light-Heavy (fig. 253) being one example. Moreover, like Cézanne and Hodler, Hartley on occasion also appropriated the symmetrical, compositional forms of traditional religious iconography. In his Fishermen’s Last Supper, Nova Scotia (fig. 254), a fisherman takes the central position traditionally reserved for Christ, while a framed painting on the wall takes the place of a halo (an artistic device found earlier in Cézanne’s The Card Players in the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia).37 Alice Neel’s (1900–1984) paintings demonstrate the power that such poses could imbue in a work. In Isabetta (fig. 255), the artist’s young daughter is depicted in the nude and given an assertive frontal pose that, like Degas’ earlier Little Dancer or Whistler’s Chelsea Girl, functions as an assault on nineteenth-century academic portrayals of childhood innocence. Isabetta stands with her feet firmly planted; her shoulders and hips are level, while her expressionless face looks directly ahead, elements that together give Neel’s daughter an eerie resemblance to the pose of a work the
Figure 252: Joseph Stella, A Vision, 1925–26, oil on canvas, 80 × 40 in. (203.2 × 101.6 cm), through prior gift of the Albert Kunstadter Family Foundation, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Ill. (1990.79).
Figure 253 (top): Marsden Hartley, Madawaska— Acadian Light-Heavy, 1940, oil on hardboard, 40 × 30 in. (101.6 × 76.2 cm), bequest of A. James Speyer, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Ill. (1987.249). Figure 254 (bottom): Marsden Hartley, Fishermen’s Last Supper, Nova Scotia, 1940–41, oil on canvas, 30 1 ⁄ 8 × 41 1 ⁄ 8 in. (76.2 × 104.2 cm), gift from the estate of Roy R. Neuberger, Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art Collection, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York (EL 02.2011.67).
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Figure 286: Graydon Parrish, The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy: September 11, 2001, 2002–06, oil on canvas, 210 × 77 in. (533.4 × 195.6 cm), Charles F. Smith Fund and in memory of Scott O’Brien who died in the World Trade Center, given by his family, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Conn. (2006.116). © Graydon Parrish. Figure 287: View over the Terracotta Army, 210 B.C.E, Chinese School (3rd century B.C.E.), Tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China 221–210 B.C.E., king of Qin from 246 B.C.E., Xianyang, China.
as they were struck by terrorists. The two central figures show a sophisticated twist on an iconic pose. Parrish has both figures on the balls of their feet, an unsteady stance that anticipates their impending fall.99 Degas once said, “No art is less spontaneous than mine… My works are the result of reflection and the study of great makers. I know nothing of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament. The same subject must be rendered ten, even a hundred times. Nothing in art may resemble an accident, not even movement.”100 Under the heading DELIBERTE! these young Americans formulated a Slow Art manifesto, which lauds art that is carefully crafted.101
China A discussion of the flourish of symmetrical poses in modern art would be incomplete without considering contemporary Chinese art. Unlike other blossoming regional artistic centers, such as India or Brazil, China had a long tradition in which figures in paintings had frontal iconic poses, as in traditional Chinese ancestor portraits. In sculpture, the thousands of clay warriors that were discovered in 1974 buried in the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi (259–210 B.C.E.)— the first Chinese emperor, who built the Great Wall and unified China—all had rigid four-sided poses (fig. 287).
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Figure 288: Zhang Xiaogang, Bloodline: Big Family, No. 2, 1995, oil on canvas, 71 × 90 1⁄ 2 in. (180.0 × 230.0 cm), private collection. Figure 289: Wang Guangyi, Cold War Preparedness, 2008, installation of some 50 life-size sculptures at the Louise Blouin Institute, London, Great Britain. © Wang Guangyi Studio.
A number of contemporary Chinese artists—particularly those who began working in the 1980s—frequently depict figures with symmetrical poses. The majority of figures in paintings by Zhang Xiaogang (born 1958) are depicted with level shoulders and hips and facing directly forward. The frontally posed family in Zhang’s Bloodline Big Family, No. 2 (fig. 288)102 finds an antecedent in Millet’s The Peasant Family (fig. 140). It recalls Bruce Laughton’s aforementioned description of Millet’s painting as a “pseudo-iconic image of a Norman peasant family,”103 or Robert Herbert’s observation that “the upright figures have a curious resemblance to
saints that confront us in earlier altar-pieces.”104 Unlike Degas and Whistler who elevated lowly figures by use of an iconic pose, both Millet and Zhang elevated people who were considered worthy members of society. Degas, Munch, and Hodler each found ways to modernize traditional Western religious art, while Zhang performs a similar feat in modernizing traditional Chinese ancestor portraits. Zhang depicts the single-child family unit demanded by the state and deploys a traditional paradigm, the family ancestor portrait, for contemporary relevance, replete with overtones of the Cultural Revolution.105
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