Tag Archives: Degas

Reviving and Exploring a Masterpiece

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Detail, Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, Dancers at the Barre, early 1880s–c. 1900. Oil on canvas, 51 1/4 x 38 1/2 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Acquired 1944.

If you missed our Conservator’s Perspective talk last week with Head of Conservation Elizabeth “Lilli” Steele and Head of Paper Conservation at the Library and Archives of Canada Anne Maheux, check out this 2008 Washingtonian article detailing Lilli’s experience delving into Degas’s masterpiece. For those who love the world of artists’ tools, artistic process, and a good mystery, this is a must-read.

Sketching 2.0

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(Left) Sketch by Shawn Lindsay of Degas's Nude Study for Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, XIX. (Right) Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, Nude Study for Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, XIX, 1879–80. Bronze, 27 3/8 x 11 9/16 x 11 15/16 in. Private Collection.

Local artist Shawn Lindsay (a.k.a. Painta) stopped by the museum this week and tweeted us the sketch (at left) he drew during his visit to Degas’s Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint. Notice anything different? In lieu of pen and paper, Lindsay used his iPad to take down drawings as he perused the galleries. Just as technology has influenced visitor experience and the strategies museums use to share their collections, technology is changing the way artists study art and store and share their own work.

Artists out there, what are some of the ways new media has influenced your artistic process?

Overheard in the Galleries: Septime Webre on Degas

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Washington Ballet Artistic Director Septime Webre discusses Degas's Dancers at the Barre. Photo: James Brantley

At a recent Phillips after 5, Septime Webre, artistic director of the Washington Ballet, provided a dancer’s point(e) of view on the Degas exhibition. At Dancers at the Barre he observed, “You see that this work is not about rehearsal. It’s about the moments in between rehearsals.” For Webre, Degas’s tendency to return to the same subjects ten times, or even a hundred times, reminded him of the dancer’s daily routine and the process of working and reworking movements to achieve harmony in the body. Webre quoted choreographer Merce Cunningham, who famously stated that to be a dancer “You have to love the daily working.”