Traipsing Through The
Arts-All Serious 20th Century Art Is About Sex-Forget That Stuff You
Learned In Art Class About The Search For The Sublime-Looking For Sex In All
The Wrong Places-With Edgar Degas’s “Four Ballerinas” In Mind
By Laura Perkins
I am feeling a sense of
liberation and also of frustration as I take on the extremely horrifying and
alarming case of the famous French painter Edgar Degas and his misused and
defiled ballerinas whose presence in his paintings everybody at one point
thought was so “cute.” (The same for the
ubiquitous sculptured versions of that poor fourteen- year old neophyte compete
with now seriously fraying tutu that it seems every museum of any size has at
least one of in the galleries on Impressionism.)
Let’s take the
liberation part first. Recently I took on an added art-related task in
reviewing the late novelist, essayist and amateur artist John Updike’s three
volumes (1989, 2005 and posthumously 2012) of musing art reviews for various
publications. As part of my review I added in where possible and where
necessary my (and my “ghost” adviser Sam Lowell’s) general theory on the central
role of sex and eroticism in serious 20th century art. That led me
into a strange place where I felt I had to take on all the cases where it
applied in his volumes. In short, making me stretch a bit on all art in the 20th
century falling under that umbrella but more importantly going a bit too light
on analysis of individual works. I received enough complains and comments to
rethink the idea of going after every possible scrap that might glue my theory.
With the last pieces I did on colorist Grady Lamont and his famous Pinetops and Eduovard Vuillard’s Woman In Striped Dress I have changed
course and have more satisfyingly looked at individual works.
The frustration part comes
from the continuing sniping, a very useful word in this case, of the
professional art cabal since I have trifled with their holy of holies-the idea that
art is the search for beauty, for the sublime, for something greater than
humankind’s meager experiences in the collective. In the alternative, no,
sometimes in the alternative but sometimes as part of the general breeze I have
been confronted with the dog whistle catch-all “art for art’s sake” to justify
every weird and wicked concept placed under the rubric of art. (Everyone knows,
lay and professional alike, that such a misty concept is like manna from heaven
when the writer is clueless about the meaning of a particular piece so I need
go no further on that except to once again chuckle when I run across the usage
in a serious monogram.) The worst offenders are in this order the art pages
journalists of the major newspapers and general journals who merely grab
whatever press releases the august members of the art cabal roll out and submit
them untouched except maybe snip off the press release part as good coin to their respect editors, the
art gallery owners the source of much of this malarkey who are stuck with
unsaleable merchandise having made the wrong moves as to which way the wind was
blowing in the upper circles of that world, and the professional art critics
who take those crumbs and in turn make the average art collector, high-end art
collector preferable but anyone who has the hard cash will do, salivate at
owning whatever the market will bear.
Additionally, some
professional art critics and here I will give a specific name, Clarence Dewar
from Art Today who is my current
frustration-causing opponent refuse to believe that this high-blown art world
has created anything but the exemplars of humankind. He will defend any artist,
great or small, against any faults found in their very human makeups. His
latest defense is of the famous what today would be called child pornographer
except in paint and metal Edgar Degas who I have shown for what he was and
nothing more, or less. Degas was obsessed with the ballerinas although he had
other vices as well. Had made hundreds of copies featuring what are clearly
underage, even for the times underaged girls at the studios mainly. He caused a
furor, went crazy or something when Madame LeBlanc refused to let him hang
around her studio of novice ballerinas. She had to threaten to get the
gendarmes (as little good as that would do since Edgar was a “national
treasure”). Naturally the great Impressionist artist was, according to Dewar,
only looking for the sublime, only looking to create beauty.
I have taken his Four Ballerinas, on display in the
French Impressionist section of the National Gallery down in Washington where
they hang with other Impressionist artists who knew all about his craven sexual
practices and who would be appalled that he is still allowed to share space
with them although through the manipulations of the art cabal all talk of the
scandals have been suppressed. From the painting it was clear that all four
ballerinas were well under sixteen years old mostly from their girlish figures
and their seeming naiveite. From what police records are still extant after Madame
LeBlanc later when she had more proof than he was just “annoying” her charges attempted
unsuccessfully to have Degas charged as a panderer I have found two at least
were under fourteen. But that is only the top of the iceberg, one girl,
Brigette, claimed with witnesses that Degas after one sitting had sexually
abused her, and had previously tried as well. The Paris police response
reflecting higher echelon decisions-nothing.
I should point out as
well since Dewar made a point of the matter in his sordid Degas’ painting defense
that the girls all had clothes on so no foul. What Dewar missed was that
clearly the two left girls were provocatively getting ready to undress or had
been directed to pose that way by Degas who was notorious, and now rightly so,
for keeping a closed studio. Moreover the closeness of the four young women on
the left side of the canvass is a well-known coded reference to sexual
congress, which made me think he was doing this painting for some fellow voyeur.
That puts paid to Dewar’s concoctions. To finish off the scene on the right
with all the Edenic pastoral which for millennia have represented “foreplay”
and to which the young women are heading tells all we need to know collected
along with the other information. Then too the lame argument that Degas’
eyesight was failing. We had a big laugh over that one was trying to pull over
on an unsuspecting public at the water cooler where even the philistines who
hate art had to chuckle.
I am very conscious that
in the age, the righteous age of #MeToo we have to be careful about being
anachronistic to an earlier time before child molestation became the currency
on the news and elsewhere. I think I have cleared that hurdle. What made me
stop for a moment, and which has caused me some anguish as contemporary society
has come down hard on those males especially who had a power relationship over
usually younger women was the worth of their creative powers against their
piggishness toward vulnerable women. It is still an open question which brooks
no easy answer. Frankly Degas’ work does not speak to the high side of sexual
expression in modern art that say for example Grady Lamont and even Eduard
Vuillard speak to in their best works (and Grady acknowledges that sex is what
is driving his work unlike Degas who cover his sordid tracks with bogus
paintings of race horses and such so that nobody would find out what he was
really doing in those tight studio spaces and ballet school locker rooms or
whatever the called the dressing areas in such places back then). I have
suggested though in the Degas case since the evidence is pretty strong that he
molested at least one and probably more than one young ballerina that he be
dropped from that “national treasure” nonsense. (This is the worst part-the
part about how he enticed so many young girls- who knows maybe he “enticed”
them with his connections to big time ballet performances if they “came across”
for him. That would leave Dewar’s silly declining eyesight stuff in the dust.)
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