Page 39 - Studio International - July August 1973

(Right) of the tense and unfamiliar posture, the sense of
Degas
Dancer looking at the sole of balance and distributed weight, is the
her right foot 1896-1911 delineation of every element in the structure.
Wax original destroyed, The distinction is evident here between the
19 in. high
character of Rodin's modelling and that of
Degas. In Rodin's fragments, modelling and
articulation, surface and structure, are
identified : the drama, the event, is in the
surface, even the smallest area of it; thus the
extension or curtailment of the fragment to
include more or less of the subject is not
crucial, and Rodin could add or subtract heads
and limbs to or from different torsos, and
radically alter the fragments' orientation in
space, without being disturbed by the resultant
incongruities. For Degas, modelling is
subordinate to structure: the 'freedom' of
handling of many of the figures has meaning
only in the clearer reading of the total structure,
causing the eye to register transition of volume
in relation to the whole, rather than focus on
local, muscular, detail.
Again, those figures which are part of a
larger ensemble, such as the Woman washing her
left leg, seem pictorial, even anecdotal. The
tension of the internal structure of the figure is
drained off by the forms of the surrounding
tableau, the modelling of which lacks the
definition and urgency demanded by the figure.
Much has been made of Degas' use of
ready-made elements, such as the tub in the
experience as a young man of architectural and and axes until a balance is achieved. From what sculpture, or the clothing of the Petite
decorative sculpture must have suggested to we know of Degas' methods, the primitive and Danseuse; but this seems a device of the order of
him a possible and expressive 'completeness' insubstantial armatures, modelling wax eked out those discussed in the painting, the novelty
for the isolated figure, preserving its with tallow and pieces of cork, an actual and immediacy of which ultimately reduce
gravitational stability while implying an physical balance in the model was as much a rather than enlarge the artist's freedom of
imbalance, an extension beyond its own consideration as the illusioned balance of the action. The Petite Danseuse is itself a
physical limits that was to characterize the figure. The effect of suspension in time and phenomenon, a freak : it must takes its place
actual fragments he later exhibited as complete space, suspended action and suspended mass, beside Rodin's nude study for Jean d' Aire as a
sculpture. The bulky muscularity of Rodin's challenging and teasing gravity, of structure masterpiece of the cul-de-sac of total
preferred models — Brancusi's 'beefsteak' — the appearing to generate itself in mid-air, inevitably naturalism, of the unbelievably and
restlessness of surfaces, the unrelieved dynamic recalls the frequent use of this type of monstrously lifelike. In spite of its modest
of diagonal axes, also affirm an ancestry in the articulation by David Smith: more so, because proportions, it was, and was intended as, the
Baroque. These obligations do not diminish of the identification of structure with material, most spectacular and shocking sculpture of the
Rodin's cultural achievement in returning than in the consciously Degaesque Dancers of nineteenth century, a triumph of inverted
health and confidence to sculpture, but they do Gonzalez, where it is the imagery that is being academicism; and indicates also Degas'
point to the total and radical break with the past followed, well within the limits of the material. intellectual kinship with later practitioners in
achieved by Degas' more modest and apparently Smith stretches steel, stresses its junctions, the same genre, Duchamp and Giacometti.
less ambitious sculptural oeuvre. takes balance to its limits, just as Degas But the Petite Danseuse is not among Degas'
Attempts have been made to find precedents stretched and stressed the human body in best sculptures, which are distinguished from
for the attitudes of Degas' models — for example attitudes that were in themselves structures before practically all modern sculpture of the first
Daumier's Ratapoil for the Petite Danseuse — but work on the sculpture was started. The use of rank, excepting possibly that of Matisse, by a
the effort is misplaced. The pose, for example, dancers as models ensured an elasticity of genuine and intrinsic privateness. They were
of the Dancer looking at the sole of her right foot posture and a stamina in sustaining it beyond the made to impress no one: Degas himself was
not only has no ancestor in sculpture, but argues reach of Rodin or of previous sculpture; but one satisfied with perhaps only the three which he
a conception of the figure as a balanced senses that Degas' interest in the figure was had cast, into plaster, in his lifetime. So much
construct, a complete and satisfying essentially formal and abstract: performance for permanence ! But it is in those few fragile
organization of related volumes, that is as was to him only the means of achieving the wax models which by circumstance were
`classical' as the perennial pose invented by contained and tensioned equilibrium of form preserved, that the central quality of modern
the fifth-century Greek sculptors, in which the he desired. constructed sculpture was distilled before
weight of the body is turned and shifted from It is notable that Degas' sculptures lose force history was ready for it. As for Degas' aversion
one point to another in an ascending vertical when they stop short of, or exceed, the limits of to emotion, there is more pathos, more heroism
from feet through knees, hips, and shoulders. the single, unsupported, nude figure. The Torso even, in his use of the human figure to express
In the Degas sculpture, the figure is of the woman sponging her back, evidently an through its own stressed posture, the 'grimace
articulated, not as with Rodin from the ground intentioned rather than an accidental fragment, of the body', an enduring and poised
upward, but from the pelvis outward in every is unsatisfying without the extended limbs and resistance to gravity, than in all the histrionics
direction, thrusting and probing with volumes head, demonstrating how essential to the reading of Romantic sculpture, Rodin included. q

29