Aphrodite, Degas' Nudes & the Feminine Form

In Search of the Ideal Female Figure

Jan. 10, 2012

4:10 p.m.

Within a few days of revisiting the Milwaukee Art Museum\'s “Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper" before it closed, I had the opportunity to visit the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Their splendid exhibition repertoire currently on display until February included “Degas and the Nude” together with “Aphrodite and the Gods of Love.” On that sunny Friday morning after viewing the exhibitions. the juxtaposition of these diverse feminine figures intrigued me the entire day.  The Degas exhibition explores this Impressionist master\'s images...bronzes, drawings, etchings, lithographs and monotypes...beginning with his student days in 1853 through his long career. This expansive collection presents another side to Degas, one Degas even refused to exhibit until he died. As a student, Degas admired and learned by drawing from the classical conception of the human form, Greek and Roman antiquities and their perceived “ideal,” whether Michelangelo\'s David or Bound Slave and the Boston MFA\'s ancient Aphrodite Untying Her Sandal. By using charcoal or graphite on colored papers, Degas defined the human figure with his deft hands and mind. His expertise and gift apparent as a student, Male Nude with Arms Crossed Behind His Back and Study of a Male Nude exemplify his talent. One oil painting stretched these limits in his 1856 canvas Male Nude, which depicted a man lying on a ledge as if stranded and wounded instead of standing with regal countenance. <o:p /> However, somewhere during his early career Degas\' perspective shifted away from these classical forms he idolized. In the 1870\'s, a series of monotypes often covered with color using pastels were captured at French brothels. Here Degas inhabited and portrayed another body type and woman, certainly the antithesis of Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love. (Although in myth, this classical vision of womanhood had many lovers.) Degas drew and immortalized the prostitute in a rather explicit series of artworks, a world only viewed from dimly light interiors in private hours. <o:p /> Degas detailed women performing their old profession, at times the only means to support themselves. The artist unabashed in his portraying every mood or position curiously observed a sensual image he titled Nude Women-Lesbian Sex. Was he truly a voyeur to this trio he placed on paper when he drew this monotype? Expanding on an unknown Degas personality? The entire series was never shown until years after his death. Another more demure work from this same series was supposedly given to fellow artist Mary Cassatt. Although also nude, Girl Putting on Stockings (1871), portrays a more tender image, an image one might think of giving to another woman from a completely different and elevated social class. Although Cassatt surely knew of these brothels and these "other" women, she was never allowed to be there or in the bars and cabarets herself, even if she would have preferred to go and perhaps draw herself.   Many of Degas\' drawings/paintings reflect women bathing or at their toilette because as the exhibition explains, women working at brothels were required to wash between clients and a tub or washbasin always remained close by. Their womanly forms rarely displayed figures similar to Greek goddesses. Some figures exposed a frame entirely opposite the revered goddesses appearing in the complimentary exhibition, as might their desire and "love" for their clients. represented by Aphrodite\'s one child, the Greek God Eros, or Roman God, Cupid. The exhibit also mentions reviews that occurred at the final Impressionist exhibition in 1886, when Degas\' nude pastels were criticized for the shapes of the women in his images. They were supposedly too full, large and non-classical in form and size that detracted from his spectacular control of the pastel medium. After this time, Degas\' drew ballet dancers, for which he is renowned, and depicted a more slender figure than the toilette images. Although his bronze sculptures remain slightly fuller fleshed, muscular,  instead of the waiflike ballet dancers required for contemporary companies. Then his dancers become interesting studies in the body\'s movement and shape, the lines and limbs curving and twisting through the bronze or on paper. During Degas\' later years, the dancer\'s elegant rhythms portrayed in their bodies combined with the artist\'s fascination with a women\'s toilette through shimmering light reflected on soft hair or dewy flesh throughout Degas\' final nudes. No one ever questioned his magical use of color, light and pastels, which he layered, sprayed and rubbed to perfection throughout his life, only his subjects, which would have offended many of his finest patrons during his lifetime. So what woman did Degas love more? Perhaps these real women he drew from his own era, women who often lived in those hidden places and moments, behind the brothel or stage doors. Yet, women today would rarely be content to be pictured in that ripened glory drawn by Degas. Even as the classical sculptures representing the ideal woman of beauty, Aphrodite, with her deep and defined curves. Her rounded breasts and swelling hips only taper to narrowing thighs and calves, although hardly what can be described as thin, which may be desirable today.  Botticelli\'s famous Birth of Venus bears an equally hourglass shape in direct contrast to the airbrushed; daringly sleek women objectified in fashion magazines. And while Playboy might praise the voluptuous breast to an extreme, there will be no protruding stomach, torsos or thighs in those photos. Either fashion model or playgirl will accurately depict only 2 percent of what an actual women\'s physique resembles. When did it change? And what does art say about the female form today? The classical standard in artistic perfection that was initially revered by Degas inspired imaginations before and after Impressionism. Although, what past women artist ever drew her own body in Degas\' era? How did we see ourselves then, covering over body corsets with bustles and shy faces with bonnets? Artists living afterwards took feminine nudity in other directions. Although following Impressionism, the Neo-Impressionists, Fauves, Cubists, Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists distilled the female form further, altering it\'s image into unrealistic colors and shapes, distorted angles and perspectives, mere splotches of textured paint at times to delineate a shoulder or hip.  Whether we study Matisse\'s shapely silhouettes in his nudes, La Danse, Picasso\'s Les Demoiselles d\'Avignon or Marcel Duchamp\'s Nudes Descending a Staircase, what is the ideal form today? Or could it be Andy Warhol\'s Marilyn Monroe or Jackie Kennedy? And where does that place Philip Pearlstein\'s nudes, who may appear hyper-realistic/? Perhaps Giacometti\'s strikingly abstract women or Henri Moore\'s copious, enlarged feminine shapes? How does modern society view an ideal woman today, especially when a Wisconsin congressman insults the current First Lady on “having a big behind?” What ideal standards apply to the figure, classical or not, and from which culture, in 2012? <o:p /> Might the 21st century idealize a more androgynous figure that leaves an Aphrodite and David at the art museum in solitude. Or will a Hermaphrodite emerge….one with female breasts and male genitals, a super human being capable of doing everything? As male and female cultural roles continually intermingle, where will that leave the living man and woman in how they define their physical selves and display love towards one other to successfully coexist? How will art reflect femininity and masculinity in the future world? Questions that wait to be answered. Perhaps for men or women, a perfect figure will best be pictured through the eyes and surrounded by the arms of that one person who loves them body and soul, wholeheartedly. For further information, pictorial highlights and reviews by the New York Times and Boston Globe on Degas and the Nude or Aphrodite and the Gods of Love go to <a href=\"http://www.mfa.org\">www.mfa.org</a> or RT@mfaboston. <o:p /> <o:p> </o:p> <o:p> </o:p>

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