On Art

...Incidentally, some art fans will be pleased to learn that a Wyeth sequel, a la Godfather Part II, is also currently playing at the Met—some 30 drawings and watercolors, most of them on public display for the first time...

...Another comparative study has been arranged for this group of bronzes...

...A first glance, the cases seem to be filled with multiple casts...

...The small bronzes, most of them cast after the artist's death in 1917, deal chiefly with nude dancers and women at their toilet...

...This in itself is a measure of how accustomed one has grown to the blockbuster approach museum heads think necessary to capture today's audiences...

...When one crumbles, I have an excuse for beginning again...

...Some Degas bronzes are extant, however, and they are the high point of the exhibit, compensating for its occasional thinness...

...The Metropolitan contends its collection is second only to the Louvre's in scope and quality, a statement that would be difficult to confirm or deny even if one's memory of the Paris museum's possessions were fresh...

...By contrast, Degas' Manet is a stocky figure, prosperous rather than chic and, whether casually seated or standing about at the racetrack, he radiates authority and intelligence...

...But when his Turkish Horse is set beside Degas' matchless rendition of a rearing equine, it looks vulgar, even taking into account its model's heavier build...

...Yet I could not help noticing that Bazille's sketch depicts Manet at his easel, looking foppish and inconsequential...

...The Degas show, sponsored by the Shuben Foundation, consists of 176 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures comprising the museum's Degas holdings...

...But Degas did not see himself in this light, according to Albert Elsen, who discusses him parenthetically in his book about Rodin...

...Still, there is no hint of the erotic in it...

...A highly successful specialist in animal sculpture, Barye taught Rodin and influenced, among others, Matisse...

...It was planned by Theodore Reff, professor of art history at Columbia University, and effected by Charles S. Moffett, the museum's assistant curator in the Department of European Paintings, with the collaboration of Jeffrey Serwatien of the Met's Department of Design...

...Degas, his famed wit notwithstanding, had an unhappy life, particularly toward the end, when he was virtually alone and nearly blind...

...An elaborate arrangement of thrusts, it exudes a strong sense of force being exerted and counteracted, the masseuse pushing against the sole of the foot and the woman, who is lying on her side, pushing right back...

...There are, for example, four variations on a sculpture entitled Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot...

...As for portraiture, the Metropolitan is quite weak compared with the National Gallery's Chester Dale collection...

...I prefer to regard this as an increasing economy of means, befitting a mature artist...

...The first Impressionist exhibition was staged in a former studio of his in 1874...

...Possibly, then, it was Degas' perception of the whole body as an instrument of expression that prompted Duranty, his friend, to observe that "with a back we can discover a temperament, an age, a social position...

...Born Felix Tourne-chon in 1820, Nadar lived to 1910, and tried every profession imaginable, from medical student to writer to caricaturist to balloonist, before finally settling on photography...

...Bronze is for eternity...

...The women are truly involved in their ablutions and their jobs, and even the horses portrayed are imbued with a similar directed-ness, seemingly warming up for the big race...

...The poses resemble each other, yet one expresses fear, the other friskiness...

...Among the pieces included to provide a sense of context or, as in the case of some Japanese prints, to indicate the artist's influences, is a small Bazille drawing of an elderly Manet...

...Conventional, albeit expert, these works remind one that Degas' artistic personality —an enigmatic mixture of strength, elegance and reticence—did not really emerge until he was 40...

...This time, instead of Baz-ille, sculptor Antoine Louis Barye comes off badly...

...I also admired the sculpture of the masseuse manipulating the extended leg of a nude client...

...On Art DEGAS' ESTHETIC OF INTELLIGENCE BY VIVIEN RAYNOR It takes several minutes to adjust to the fact that Degas at the Metropolitan (through September 4), is surprisingly free of either didacticism or public relations hype...

...The contorted arm of a young dancer hanging on to the bar as she strains her body and raised leg into position and the face of critic Edmond Duranty are equally intelligent...

...At any rate, there is no measuring how much of Degas' sadness was caused by his own failing faculties and how much by the loss of faith pervading the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries...

...Startling in its absence was the usual five-pound catalogue, but a short commentary adapted from Reff's Degas: The Mind of the Artist can be had for $2.95, The production begins with drawings and prints reflecting the painter's apprenticeship to the Renaissance masters, Rembrandt, and his immediate forebear, Ingres...

...Degas' self-image is perhaps reflected in his answer to Rodin's question about his unwillingness to cast his wax and plaster models by saying: "It's too great a responsibility...

...They are well displayed in glass cases and perfectly lit...

...A contrast between the aforementioned rearing beast and Degas' Prancing Horse is more rewarding: It proves he was attuned to animal as well as human psychology...

...a closer examination discloses exiguous differences between them...

...In fact, the whole of Degas' art is concerned with intelligence, a quality he considered a kind of energy informing the body instead of simply the ability to perform mental operations...

...Interestingly, the exhibit is apparently attracting much the same size crowds as last year's aggressively promoted Impressionist Epoch or the recent much-touted Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth...

...From the late '70s onward, the painter took his place among the great sculptors, rivaling and sometimes excelling his contemporary, Rodin...

...The design of the Met show precludes this wonderful piece being shown at the same low level on which it was constructed...

...Grouped according to medium and arranged more or less chronologically, the installation strikes exactly the proper note of late 19th-century melancholy...

...Noteworthy, too, is The Tub, containing a woman whose right hand is washing her left leg...

...While Nadar brought no specific esthetic to portraiture, he was superb at it, and possessed Degas' ability to extract the essence from his sitters, persons as varied as Sarah Bernhardt, Rossini and Barye...

...Degas came from a class that, if not idle, at least enjoyed its leisure...

...Degas' appreciation of this efficient little body is overwhelming...

...It may be unfair to compare this to Degas' studies of the same model, for Bazille was doubtlessly a lesser talent...

...Jean Sutherland Boggs, a noted authority on the artist, observes a disintegration in his late portraits, indicating to her a loss of interest in individual character...

...Despite his remark to Rodin, Degas needed no technical reason to "begin again...

...In any event, Degas' oeuvre is not easily visualized as a whole: In the first place, it is by nature fragmentary...

...Degas may have been unique, but he was a man of his time, too, as the Nadar show that briefly adjoined his confirmed...

...The two artists were friends, and it is likely that Rodin was one of the few people allowed to inspect work that Degas for the most part usually kept secret...

...Although no one knows for sure when the artist seriously took up sculpture, it is certain that the discipline was important in eliminating the sweetness that was threatening his work of the early 1870s...

...In effect, the work of both men says that turbulent as the period was, it had a very special quality justifying the nostalgia it now arouses...

...A memorable piece in this extraordinary lineup is the green bronze called Spanish Dance, another of the artist's stringy adolescents whose body's every plane works to convey the staccato, fierce quality of Spanish dancing...

...reminiscent of Picasso's talent for improvisation, the tub appears to have once been a large platter...

...So it is interesting that an aura of purposeful activity surrounds his sculpture...

...Hence the illusion of a figure partly submerged in a bath, a foot and hand resting on the rim, is somewhat lost...

...An illustrated checklist is available, and viewing guidance is supplied by wall labels that, even if they are oppressively academic in tone, are not too obtrusive...

...You know how I like to work these figures over and over...

...Elsen remarks that Degas was here more adventuresome than Rodin in his "literal as well as figurative removal of the woman from her pedestal...

...in the second, many of his finest pieces are privately owned...

...It was the last time people were able to perceive the character, the inner meaning, of others, as opposed to our own era, where every man seeks —and can find—only his own individuality...

...The slightly smaller nude version of the same figure is perhaps more satisfactory because it reveals the sharply slanted torso and the concavity formed at the junction of the leg and the pelvis, tilted into the hip-shot pose...

...I never see the Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer without marveling at the construction of the upturned face and the racehorse legs, though its net tutu and satin hair ribbon make it a strange effigy indeed...

...Rather, he was obsessed with duplicating the models' forms and thrusts in order to reveal underlying character...