Traipsing Through The Arts-All Serious 20^th 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 20^th 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 20^th 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.)    

I have earnestly suggested that as reparations to the identifiable descendants of those poor young professional women of their times that the next time a Degas goes up for sale for a zillion dollars that instead that money be put in a fund to right the justice scales a little. I have had my say.