Day 317 - Degas statuettes

 October 27, 2022

I've peered into gallery 814 several times and looked forward to visiting it, because it has significant sentimental value for me.  My mother loved both Degas and the ballet, and the gallery contains 56 Degas bronze statuettes, primarily of dancers and horses. I recall that on one of our last visits to the Met, I pushed her in a wheelchair, but she hoisted herself up from the seat, the better to see these works.

I read that the statuettes, originally modeled in clay, wax, and plasticine, were discovered in Degas’ studio after his death in 1917. Degas apparently made them for his own contemplation and use, the sculptural equivalent of sketches;  only one was ever exhibited. A few years after his demise, however, bronze castings were made of 72 statuettes; Mrs. Oscar Havemeyer scooped up most of them and donated them to the Met in 1929. We are in her debt. 

A placard discusses the difficulty of dating the statuettes. It seems clear, at least to me, that Degas initially focused on horses and then moved on to human figures. At least one critic posits that the later statuettes exhibit a greater sense of movement. I would say that, on the whole, the later works reflect a more daring sense of balance, with dancers frequently poised on one foot and horses having several feet raised above the ground. It occurs to me that I don't know whether the original statuettes were somehow attached to bases the way that the bronzes are. But it's these more precariously balanced statuettes that especially appeal to me.  

One entitled "Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot,"stands about 14 inches above its base and was modeled sometime between 1895 and 1910.  The dancer 's body twists to the right as she bends her right leg  upward behind her and grasps her foot with her right hand and gazes down at it;  her left arm is raised in counterbalance.  The pose is a bit like the quad stretch I do lying on the floor; the first time I try to replicate the dancer's position, I pull my hamstring and emit an involuntary grunt.  I can't imagine holding this pose for more than a moment, but Degas has captured that moment and made it timeless.

"First Arabesque Penchee," also measuring about 14 inches above the base as its highest point, was probably modeled between 1892 and 1896. The dancer assumes what appears to me an equally impossible position: her body tilts at an extreme diagonal as her right hand reaches forward and her left leg lifts far above the ground, foot turned inward. Again, I try this pose and can't get my leg nearly that high above the ground, especially if, like the dancer, I keep my right knee unbent. I wonder suddenly whether Degas actually observed dancers in these poses as he watched them in the studio, or whether the statuettes are based on his imagination. (I suppose this is an answerable question, and maybe at some point I'll look it up - not now)

A third, much smaller statuette (perhaps measuring 7 or 8 inches in both height and length) was modeled in the late 1880s and is labeled "Horse Galloping on Right Foot," a title that I can't fathom, since both the creature's forelegs are raised off the ground. A placard helps me understand the possible origin of this work: Degas' awareness of and interest in the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge.  Like Muybridge, Degas' work provides a visual record of a transitory state,  thereby fixing what is momentary into memory.

As I'm looking around the gallery, a small group of college-age students comes in with their teacher. The teacher asks a young man to talk about a sculpture, and he chooses "Dancer Looking at the Sole...," describing it as "fun." She's clearly dissatisfied with this response and asks him to describe it as a statuette. Eventually, she tells the class the "right answer" to her question: that the work is "built up in space." This strikes me as utterly inane - what statue isn't built up in space, isn't its three-dimensionality the defining essence of a statue? I remember Bob Granger once commenting that, as a matter of instructional practice, a teacher shouldn't ask an open-ended question if he or she has only one answer in mind. It's a precept this teacher has evidently failed to learn.