Degas Paper
Directions:
Summarize the following article on Degas in 1 page.
Include and talk about this information in your summary (tell me what the article says)
Success Criteria:
Summarize the following article on Degas in 1 page.
Include and talk about this information in your summary (tell me what the article says)
- Explain what Degas used as inspiration
- paste in the image from your PJ next to the writing
- The Dancers
- paste in the image from your PJ next to the writing
- Carriage at the Races
- paste in the image from your PJ next to the writing
Success Criteria:
- Clear, big headlines
- Neat, clean handwriting
- All information on hand out is included.
- Images are neatly cut out and glued into the process journal.
- NO tape or staples. If an image is hanging off the page it will not count
Degas: A Personal Point of View
At the end of the 19th century, a few artists were change the way people looked at the world. The works shown here by French artist Edgar Degas don’t look unusual today but when they were created over a century ago, they were considered very radical.
During the 1870s, Paris was the center of the art world. At that time art was controlled by a powerful organization, the French Academy, and artists had to follow strict rules in order to get their work shown. Paintings had to be huge, detailed and carefully planned, and the results were usually artificial and lifeless. At the same time, a new invention, photography, was beginning to compete with this kind of painting.
Discouraged by what they saw in the Academy shows, a group young artists- among them Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas- decided to create images based on the world they saw around them. Monet and Renoir and other Impressionists took their canvases outdoors in order to paint nature directly. Degas chose to express the world he saw through his inventive and usual compositions.
Born in Paris 1834, Degas was the son of a wealthy banker. In high school, his grades were “satisfactory”, but he was often criticized by his teachers as “having his head in the clouds”. He entered law school to please his father, but spent much of time in museums sketching. He quit the law to paint, and by the end of the 1860s had several works accepted by the Academy. But Degas didn’t want to follow the Academy’s rules, so in the 1870s and 1880s, he and a number of other Impressionist artists started to organize their own exhibitions.
Degas wanted to show life as we experience it, minute by minute. In “real life” people aren’t always in the center of our vision; we see them from many angles. Our eye selects certain objects and crops others out. Degas composed his portraits so as to tell us more about his subjects. The singer in the portrait, Singer With a Glove, is in the corner of the frame, while her black-gloved arm in the center emphasizes the drawing’s focal point, her large open mouth. Degas has placed his portrait of a musician friend in the middle of a row of faces. He is framed by the orchestra surrounding him and the line of headless dancers above him.
Toward the end of his life, Degas began losing his sight. His lines grew heavier, his colors brighter, and his compositions simpler and bolder. In 1907, Degas became totally blind and had to stop painting. By then his work was well known and his paintings were selling for large amounts. Degas, who could no longer see, said, “I feel like horse who has just won the biggest race of the year and gets fed the same old bag of oats.” The artist died 10 years later, in 1917.
Painting Motion
Edgar Degas was fascinated by the quality of movement, which he expressed through his dynamic compositions. Degas went to many theatrical performances but his favorite was ballet. He painted this theme over and over again, always searching new ways to capture dancers’ movements.
The artist went to dance classes and rehearsals, standing backstage where he was able to see the dancers up close. How many different activities are going on at the same time in the drawing on the left? This pastel, done in 1874, is called Rehearsal on Stage. But can pick out the only two figures on the stage that actually practicing dance steps? Most of the people are doing other things- yawning, stretching, scratching, tying shows , or just sitting. As in “real life” everyone is thinking of something different and paying little attention to other people.
Degas and the Impressionists wanted to present a realistic view of the world with nothing edited out- “a slice of life” as they called it. Rehearsal on Stage depicts a casual scene, but the work is carefully composed. Degas does not show the stage from audience’s viewpoint. He chose an unusual point of view- above, from one side- giving the scene a diagonal and distorted look. Degas’ asymmetrical arrangement squeezes the figures to the left, then balances the composition with empty or negative space on the right. The dancers on the far left are abruptly cropped, giving the feeling they are walking out of the drawing. The scene is framed by stage sets and part of an instrument that appears in the lower left. Dramatic spotlighting emphasizes the three-dimensional quality of the scene.
When Degas first began depicting the ballet, his Rehearsal on Stage were realistic, filled figures, and set in large, complex spaces. As his art developed and his eyesight grew worse, his compositions became simplified, his shapes abstract, his colors brighter. In the 1899 pastel below the dancers appear to be busting of the frame. The composition is based on crisscrossing diagonals, closely cropped at each edge. The space is flat and the colors (such as the purple faces and red skin) are more expressive than realistic. In his last works, like this one, Degas’ dance pictures became flat, abstract patterns of motion.
Day at the Races
Degas spent most of his time working in his studio, but sometimes even he needed a change of scene. It was during the early 1860s that he was visiting a school friend outside Paris, who lived near a racecourse. Soon, horse racing became one of the artist’s favorite activities. The races themselves-who won and in what time- meant little to Degas. He liked the moments between races when he could informal sketches. He used horses and riders in the same way the he used ballet dancers- to show movement though composition.
Compare the compositions of these racing pictures. Degas presents each from an unusual point of view. In many of his paintings, such as Race Course Scene, shadows create long diagonals. These diagonals echo the more static verticals of the horses and riders, suggesting the dynamic action of the races to come.
Degas got many of his compositional ideas from the new art of photography. Many of these works are abruptly cropped; the action seems to extend beyond the frame, as it would in a camera viewfinder. In which of these paintings does Degas use photograph-like close-ups; in which does he use long shots (the subject in the distance)?
We seem to be close to and on the same eye level as the horses and riders in the painting on the left. Here, Degas uses a inventive compositional device to enhance the feeling of action. The two horses’ heads that have been abruptly cropped on the left appear to enter the composition on the right, creating an added feeling of motion.
Sometimes Degas painted the races from a great distance. In the painting on the far left you can barely see the two tiny racing horses in the background. The horses and riders are framed by the negative space of the sky, the small carriage on the left and the large carriage in the right foreground.
In the race pictures Degas did toward the end of his life, his work became more abstract (simplified, stylized). In Fallen Jockey, a black horse seems to hover over a crumpled gold figure. The background no longer resembles a field but it has become a flat area of green paint. When he did this work, the artist could hardly see, so he had to paint motion purely from imagination.
At the end of the 19th century, a few artists were change the way people looked at the world. The works shown here by French artist Edgar Degas don’t look unusual today but when they were created over a century ago, they were considered very radical.
During the 1870s, Paris was the center of the art world. At that time art was controlled by a powerful organization, the French Academy, and artists had to follow strict rules in order to get their work shown. Paintings had to be huge, detailed and carefully planned, and the results were usually artificial and lifeless. At the same time, a new invention, photography, was beginning to compete with this kind of painting.
Discouraged by what they saw in the Academy shows, a group young artists- among them Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas- decided to create images based on the world they saw around them. Monet and Renoir and other Impressionists took their canvases outdoors in order to paint nature directly. Degas chose to express the world he saw through his inventive and usual compositions.
Born in Paris 1834, Degas was the son of a wealthy banker. In high school, his grades were “satisfactory”, but he was often criticized by his teachers as “having his head in the clouds”. He entered law school to please his father, but spent much of time in museums sketching. He quit the law to paint, and by the end of the 1860s had several works accepted by the Academy. But Degas didn’t want to follow the Academy’s rules, so in the 1870s and 1880s, he and a number of other Impressionist artists started to organize their own exhibitions.
Degas wanted to show life as we experience it, minute by minute. In “real life” people aren’t always in the center of our vision; we see them from many angles. Our eye selects certain objects and crops others out. Degas composed his portraits so as to tell us more about his subjects. The singer in the portrait, Singer With a Glove, is in the corner of the frame, while her black-gloved arm in the center emphasizes the drawing’s focal point, her large open mouth. Degas has placed his portrait of a musician friend in the middle of a row of faces. He is framed by the orchestra surrounding him and the line of headless dancers above him.
Toward the end of his life, Degas began losing his sight. His lines grew heavier, his colors brighter, and his compositions simpler and bolder. In 1907, Degas became totally blind and had to stop painting. By then his work was well known and his paintings were selling for large amounts. Degas, who could no longer see, said, “I feel like horse who has just won the biggest race of the year and gets fed the same old bag of oats.” The artist died 10 years later, in 1917.
Painting Motion
Edgar Degas was fascinated by the quality of movement, which he expressed through his dynamic compositions. Degas went to many theatrical performances but his favorite was ballet. He painted this theme over and over again, always searching new ways to capture dancers’ movements.
The artist went to dance classes and rehearsals, standing backstage where he was able to see the dancers up close. How many different activities are going on at the same time in the drawing on the left? This pastel, done in 1874, is called Rehearsal on Stage. But can pick out the only two figures on the stage that actually practicing dance steps? Most of the people are doing other things- yawning, stretching, scratching, tying shows , or just sitting. As in “real life” everyone is thinking of something different and paying little attention to other people.
Degas and the Impressionists wanted to present a realistic view of the world with nothing edited out- “a slice of life” as they called it. Rehearsal on Stage depicts a casual scene, but the work is carefully composed. Degas does not show the stage from audience’s viewpoint. He chose an unusual point of view- above, from one side- giving the scene a diagonal and distorted look. Degas’ asymmetrical arrangement squeezes the figures to the left, then balances the composition with empty or negative space on the right. The dancers on the far left are abruptly cropped, giving the feeling they are walking out of the drawing. The scene is framed by stage sets and part of an instrument that appears in the lower left. Dramatic spotlighting emphasizes the three-dimensional quality of the scene.
When Degas first began depicting the ballet, his Rehearsal on Stage were realistic, filled figures, and set in large, complex spaces. As his art developed and his eyesight grew worse, his compositions became simplified, his shapes abstract, his colors brighter. In the 1899 pastel below the dancers appear to be busting of the frame. The composition is based on crisscrossing diagonals, closely cropped at each edge. The space is flat and the colors (such as the purple faces and red skin) are more expressive than realistic. In his last works, like this one, Degas’ dance pictures became flat, abstract patterns of motion.
Day at the Races
Degas spent most of his time working in his studio, but sometimes even he needed a change of scene. It was during the early 1860s that he was visiting a school friend outside Paris, who lived near a racecourse. Soon, horse racing became one of the artist’s favorite activities. The races themselves-who won and in what time- meant little to Degas. He liked the moments between races when he could informal sketches. He used horses and riders in the same way the he used ballet dancers- to show movement though composition.
Compare the compositions of these racing pictures. Degas presents each from an unusual point of view. In many of his paintings, such as Race Course Scene, shadows create long diagonals. These diagonals echo the more static verticals of the horses and riders, suggesting the dynamic action of the races to come.
Degas got many of his compositional ideas from the new art of photography. Many of these works are abruptly cropped; the action seems to extend beyond the frame, as it would in a camera viewfinder. In which of these paintings does Degas use photograph-like close-ups; in which does he use long shots (the subject in the distance)?
We seem to be close to and on the same eye level as the horses and riders in the painting on the left. Here, Degas uses a inventive compositional device to enhance the feeling of action. The two horses’ heads that have been abruptly cropped on the left appear to enter the composition on the right, creating an added feeling of motion.
Sometimes Degas painted the races from a great distance. In the painting on the far left you can barely see the two tiny racing horses in the background. The horses and riders are framed by the negative space of the sky, the small carriage on the left and the large carriage in the right foreground.
In the race pictures Degas did toward the end of his life, his work became more abstract (simplified, stylized). In Fallen Jockey, a black horse seems to hover over a crumpled gold figure. The background no longer resembles a field but it has become a flat area of green paint. When he did this work, the artist could hardly see, so he had to paint motion purely from imagination.