The desire to draw began to manifest itself in Degas as a child, although his father prophesied him a career as a lawyer. Degas was from a wealthy family and did not need money badly, so he could afford not to sell his works and work on them repeatedly, striving for perfection. Degas was a perfectionist, reaching in his passion for perfect harmony to the point of losing the sense of reality. Most of Degas’ drawings are sketches and sketches of human figures, such as, for example, “A Ballerina Tying a Shoe,” 1880-1885. The drawing is made not only with a pencil but with charcoal. It is worth noting that Edgar Degas was addicted to photography, which left a clear imprint on his painting. Typical Impressionists in their work paid more attention to the landscape, while Degas sought and wrote in his favorite subjects primarily movement (washing women, ballerinas in dance, etc.). It seems that the heroes of his works seem unaware that they are being watched.
Usually, the artist made several preliminary sketches and sometimes used the same sketch for several different canvases. Degas’ images are full of dynamism; they embody the accelerated rhythms of the contemporary era for the artist. It was the passion for the transmission of movement that, according to him, determined Degas’ favorite subjects: images of galloping horses, ballerinas at rehearsals, laundresses and ironing women at work (Higonnet, 2021). Edgar Degas saw and felt the world around him as a dynamic element, never decreasing the life of the metropolis. And the artist’s photographic memory helped him notice all the peculiarities of Paris. In his paintings, he recreates the rhythm of urban life and depicts the situation of the premises, images of citizens, and events in detail. If someone consider the picture of Horace’s oath, then they depict more prim figures.
Modernity in art is the reflection of the reality of a given time in terms of criteria that meet its requirements. Modernity is a broad concept; it includes the relevance topicality of art without being reduced to them simultaneously. Here we are talking about the modern interpretation of the problems studied in art about the objective grounds for this interpretation. Calling Edgar Degas Impressionists, one should know that this direction was for him only a means to expand the picturesque horizons (Kelly, 2021). The result was an avid interest in modern subjects, which the artist sought to portray in a new and unusual way. The fact is that by the end of the XIX century, after the Impressionist group broke up, it was Degas’ canvases that were the most impressionistic in style. At the same time, it is known that bright colors and blurred forms in the artist’s later works result from progressive vision problems.
Modernity in art presupposes, first of all, the search for something new both in the content structure of the work of art and in the field of the art form of the work. Modern trends of bourgeois art (modernism) demonstrate the disintegration of elements of content and form for the sake of specially introduced “novelty.” In contrast, socialist art is focused on an active invasion of life, the search for new things in content, form, artistic means, and techniques. It is consonant with the life of the people, their ideas, aspirations. Working on the painting “Dance Class”, Degas depicts on his canvases not only the grace and beauty of ballerinas but also another side of art that is hidden from the viewer’s eyes. The painter creates images of elegant girls in a slightly different light. For this reverse side of the ballet, the artist is called modern, which has come into conflict with official painting.
References
Higonnet, A. (2021). Critical Impressionism: A Painting by Mary Cassatt and Its Challenge to the Social Rules of Art. Wiley Blackwell Companion to Impressionism, 219-233.
Kelly, S. (2021). “Plume Mania” Degas, Feathers, and the Global Millinery Trade. Wiley Blackwell Companion to Impressionism, 415-434.