Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated:
1
00:02:24,520 --> 00:02:29,520
"It seems to me that if one wants to be a serious artist today,
2
00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:33,560
and create an original little niche for oneself,
3
00:02:34,320 --> 00:02:36,920
or at least ensure that one preserves
4
00:02:37,040 --> 00:02:40,160
the highest degree of innocence of character,
5
00:02:40,920 --> 00:02:45,760
one must constantly immerse oneself in solitude.
6
00:02:48,640 --> 00:02:50,079
There is too much
7
00:02:50,160 --> 00:02:52,079
tittle-tattle.
8
00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:57,480
It is as if paintings were made like speculations on the stock markets,
9
00:02:57,560 --> 00:03:02,360
out of the friction among people eager for gain.
10
00:03:03,880 --> 00:03:08,560
The heart is an instrument which goes rusty if it isn't used.
11
00:03:10,120 --> 00:03:14,360
Is it possible to be a heartless artist?"
12
00:03:51,640 --> 00:03:55,000
I think what makes Degas fascinating
13
00:03:55,079 --> 00:04:00,200
and really very alive to a 21st-century audience
14
00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:07,000
is that he is more interested in process than in the end result.
15
00:04:10,440 --> 00:04:13,920
We wanted to ensure that this exhibition of Degas
16
00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:15,240
was like no other.
17
00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:17,600
We also wanted to explore fresh themes
18
00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:20,720
and look at Degas' work in a slightly different angle.
19
00:04:22,600 --> 00:04:25,800
You can see his kind of, the intellectual understanding
20
00:04:25,880 --> 00:04:27,440
that underpins his work.
21
00:04:27,520 --> 00:04:32,400
Particularly his curiosity for the work of earlier ages.
22
00:04:32,480 --> 00:04:38,760
He's certainly moved very much into the light as a personality.
23
00:04:43,880 --> 00:04:48,120
Degas, I think, cultivated an "unknowability".
24
00:04:48,200 --> 00:04:52,000
He disliked people writing about him and his art.
25
00:04:52,080 --> 00:04:57,640
And much of his art that we see today was never intended to be seen.
26
00:04:57,720 --> 00:05:00,040
It came from his studio after his death.
27
00:05:03,360 --> 00:05:06,360
I think Degas was quite a strategist
28
00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:09,440
in terms of his relationship to his audience
29
00:05:09,520 --> 00:05:11,720
and his market.
30
00:05:11,800 --> 00:05:15,120
It's like he wanted to keep all the work around him.
31
00:05:15,200 --> 00:05:17,800
And work quietly away on this thing,
32
00:05:17,880 --> 00:05:21,240
I really think of as his research, you know.
33
00:05:21,320 --> 00:05:27,160
It's like he hones the body of work, his focus on particular subjects
34
00:05:27,240 --> 00:05:30,160
to a narrower and narrower extreme,
35
00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:33,120
in order to push through into some new territory.
36
00:05:34,760 --> 00:05:37,760
You know, honestly, when I circle back to the group
37
00:05:37,840 --> 00:05:40,000
of ambitious 19th-century French painters,
38
00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:42,360
I do often keep coming back to Degas.
39
00:05:42,440 --> 00:05:45,080
He is endlessly surprising
40
00:05:45,159 --> 00:05:47,760
and infinite in his experimentation
41
00:05:47,840 --> 00:05:50,800
and his experimental spirit in all of the media.
42
00:05:50,880 --> 00:05:54,240
A little bit of poetry and sculpture, and again in printmaking.
43
00:05:54,320 --> 00:05:58,320
An absolutely amazing printmaker. Pastel painting, oil painting.
44
00:06:11,880 --> 00:06:13,320
Degas is quite innovative
45
00:06:13,400 --> 00:06:17,760
because he really brings us into a, kind of, an intimate scene,
46
00:06:17,840 --> 00:06:21,680
so you feel part of the picture by being in front of it,
47
00:06:21,760 --> 00:06:25,720
and almost participating as a viewer to the scene.
48
00:06:25,800 --> 00:06:28,800
And what he paints is so fresh.
49
00:06:28,880 --> 00:06:30,640
That can only bring,
50
00:06:30,720 --> 00:06:33,320
first of all, I think it can only bring you happiness.
51
00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:36,760
And it's always amazing to look at Degas' pictures
52
00:06:36,840 --> 00:06:40,200
because Degas women are not pretty or beautiful,
53
00:06:40,280 --> 00:06:42,360
well prepared,
54
00:06:42,440 --> 00:06:45,840
they are just here as touch of colours, of shapes.
55
00:06:45,920 --> 00:06:51,600
It's almost like a way that Degas can use the form, the shapes, the colours
56
00:06:51,680 --> 00:06:53,080
and put them all together.
57
00:06:53,680 --> 00:06:55,680
It seems really important to him
58
00:06:55,760 --> 00:06:58,400
that he took these risks with accepted practice.
59
00:06:59,800 --> 00:07:03,360
Putting at risk the physical integrity of the work at times.
60
00:07:03,440 --> 00:07:06,720
And I think he was very modern in that respect.
61
00:07:08,560 --> 00:07:12,400
Any exhibition about an artist is just a beginning.
62
00:07:12,480 --> 00:07:15,920
You start with a structure, you have things that you want to show.
63
00:07:16,040 --> 00:07:18,400
You have ideas that you want to articulate.
64
00:07:18,480 --> 00:07:22,680
But it's in the process of the installation,
65
00:07:22,760 --> 00:07:28,800
and often during the course of the exhibition, that you learn so much more.
66
00:07:28,880 --> 00:07:34,240
The way one work speaks to another becomes very telling
67
00:07:34,320 --> 00:07:38,920
and sheds a lot more light on Degas' practice and his process.
68
00:09:36,040 --> 00:09:38,040
The Fitzwilliam museum is fortunate
69
00:09:38,120 --> 00:09:41,520
in that it has the largest and most representative collection
70
00:09:41,600 --> 00:09:44,480
of works by Degas in any British institution.
71
00:09:45,520 --> 00:09:48,560
This is largely due to a particular series of collectors
72
00:09:48,640 --> 00:09:51,440
who generously gave works by Degas
73
00:09:51,520 --> 00:09:53,840
in a variety of media.
74
00:09:53,920 --> 00:09:57,800
Thus we can show not just paintings and pastels and drawings,
75
00:09:57,880 --> 00:10:02,120
but we can show prints of a variety of traditions, monotypes.
76
00:10:02,200 --> 00:10:07,040
And we also have, as well as bronze sculpture by Degas,
77
00:10:07,120 --> 00:10:10,120
we have actually three original wax statuettes.
78
00:11:06,840 --> 00:11:10,080
The Fitzwilliam Museum was founded in 1816
79
00:11:10,160 --> 00:11:13,520
from the will of Richard, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam,
80
00:11:13,600 --> 00:11:16,920
and is the principal museum of art and archaeology
81
00:11:17,040 --> 00:11:19,080
of the University of Cambridge in England.
82
00:11:23,520 --> 00:11:27,040
The great strengths of the collection are, I suppose, Western painting,
83
00:11:27,120 --> 00:11:28,920
old master painting and prints.
84
00:11:29,040 --> 00:11:32,040
But also, we have extraordinary illuminated manuscripts,
85
00:11:32,120 --> 00:11:35,480
musical scores, and archival material.
86
00:11:39,880 --> 00:11:42,320
The collections of the museum, I sometimes describe them
87
00:11:42,400 --> 00:11:44,160
as a sort of a miniature Louvre.
88
00:11:45,040 --> 00:11:48,160
Very good Egyptian, Greek, Roman antiquities.
89
00:11:57,440 --> 00:12:01,840
furniture, silver, ceramics,
90
00:12:01,920 --> 00:12:03,160
glass.
91
00:12:03,240 --> 00:12:05,760
And strange things, like an armoury.
92
00:12:11,560 --> 00:12:15,120
Upstairs, we have a very fine and representative collection
93
00:12:15,200 --> 00:12:16,440
of Western painting.
94
00:12:17,320 --> 00:12:21,720
The tradition is to display the pictures alongside sculpture, furniture,
95
00:12:21,800 --> 00:12:23,560
and decorative arts of the period,
96
00:12:23,640 --> 00:12:25,640
so they form almost like a, kind of,
97
00:12:25,720 --> 00:12:27,840
the atmosphere is rather like a country house.
98
00:12:27,920 --> 00:12:31,360
Indeed, from the earliest period, from the 1930s,
99
00:12:31,440 --> 00:12:35,280
it was intended that the museum should be a civilising place
100
00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:40,440
for the students and other visitors to, kind of, take inspiration from.
101
00:12:40,520 --> 00:12:44,320
In every sense of the word, it's a very sort of encyclopaedic museum.
102
00:12:49,160 --> 00:12:51,360
The main idea behind the conception of the show
103
00:12:51,440 --> 00:12:56,120
was unashamedly to profile Cambridge's amazing collections of work by Degas.
104
00:12:59,280 --> 00:13:02,240
The subtitle of the exhibition, "Passion for Perfection",
105
00:13:02,320 --> 00:13:06,680
is drawn from Ambroise Vollard's recollections of Degas
106
00:13:06,760 --> 00:13:09,880
and in the context that he said it,
107
00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:16,080
he really meant it defensively to respond to those who had thought
108
00:13:16,160 --> 00:13:17,760
that Degas was somebody who,
109
00:13:17,840 --> 00:13:20,920
in treating the same subject again and again,
110
00:13:21,040 --> 00:13:23,160
or a variance of the same composition,
111
00:13:23,240 --> 00:13:26,440
that there was some lack of imagination.
112
00:13:26,520 --> 00:13:32,520
No, Vollard said, it was because he was driven by a passion for perfection
113
00:13:32,600 --> 00:13:36,360
as part of what he called "an ongoing pictorial research".
114
00:13:37,240 --> 00:13:41,000
In the context of the exhibition, that statement really is a question mark.
115
00:13:41,080 --> 00:13:43,240
Was this what drove Degas?
116
00:13:43,920 --> 00:13:47,440
Or was it, as some other of his contemporaries said,
117
00:13:47,520 --> 00:13:51,000
a neurotic inability to satisfy himself?
118
00:13:52,280 --> 00:13:55,360
Or, a century after his death,
119
00:13:55,440 --> 00:13:59,000
was it really something that we can now align more
120
00:13:59,080 --> 00:14:02,480
with what we associate with certain types of modern art
121
00:14:02,560 --> 00:14:08,880
and the non finito, this lack of need, or lack of will to finish,
122
00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:12,280
to ever find anything that's complete.
123
00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:21,040
"A certain picture of Degas exists,
124
00:14:21,120 --> 00:14:23,320
almost legendary, mythical.
125
00:14:24,120 --> 00:14:27,120
It is the artist as a recluse,
126
00:14:27,200 --> 00:14:29,720
voluntarily leading a churlish life.
127
00:14:29,800 --> 00:14:34,800
Always working, searching, almost always dissatisfied.
128
00:14:35,640 --> 00:14:38,840
He kept the greater part of his art hidden in boxes
129
00:14:38,920 --> 00:14:41,360
out of which he scarcely ever took anything,
130
00:14:41,440 --> 00:14:44,880
except what he was forced to sell to enable him to live.
131
00:14:46,440 --> 00:14:49,520
Degas was not one of those oral improvisers
132
00:14:49,600 --> 00:14:52,360
whose inspiration dries up at the sight of a pen.
133
00:14:53,160 --> 00:14:55,640
He spoke as he wrote,
134
00:14:55,720 --> 00:14:59,240
with the same sparkling and savoury power,
135
00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:01,120
the same clarity.
136
00:15:01,200 --> 00:15:05,280
Down to the last brief, sad notes of the final years,
137
00:15:05,360 --> 00:15:11,680
there still persists the old vivacity, the character, the line."
138
00:15:14,440 --> 00:15:17,720
What we know about him, we know through sometimes friends,
139
00:15:17,800 --> 00:15:19,880
sometimes acquaintances, second-hand,
140
00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:23,800
and he was the master of the epigram.
141
00:15:23,880 --> 00:15:30,400
He tended to make pronouncements that, on analysis, don't quite fit.
142
00:15:30,480 --> 00:15:36,560
So, those sorts of things make him very easily misunderstood.
143
00:15:41,040 --> 00:15:44,360
"It is true, isn't it, my dear Moreau,
144
00:15:44,440 --> 00:15:48,600
that there is a way of making light, beauty, feeling,
145
00:15:48,680 --> 00:15:53,440
line and colour out of a lot of love for what one does,
146
00:15:54,160 --> 00:15:56,400
out of the desire to learn
147
00:15:56,480 --> 00:16:01,800
and a deep conviction of the excellence of painting, as Vasari said?"
148
00:17:01,680 --> 00:17:05,880
Edgar Degas was born in Paris to an upper middle class family
149
00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:08,440
and was the eldest of five children.
150
00:17:09,440 --> 00:17:13,119
When he became an adult, he changed his name from De Gas
151
00:17:13,200 --> 00:17:15,720
back to its original form, Degas,
152
00:17:15,800 --> 00:17:18,200
believing it to be less pretentious.
153
00:17:19,560 --> 00:17:23,280
Degas' father, Auguste, came from merchant gentry
154
00:17:23,359 --> 00:17:27,440
and ran a small family bank, established in Naples and Florence.
155
00:17:28,119 --> 00:17:30,760
Degas' mother, Celestine Musson,
156
00:17:30,840 --> 00:17:34,200
was a French Creole born in New Orleans.
157
00:17:34,280 --> 00:17:37,040
She died when Degas was only 13.
158
00:17:39,840 --> 00:17:42,360
Degas, from the age of about 11,
159
00:17:42,440 --> 00:17:46,840
became a boarder at one of the most prestigious schools in Paris,
160
00:17:46,920 --> 00:17:49,520
the Lyc?e Louis le Grand,
161
00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:55,200
and it was there that he met some of the young men who would be lifelong friends.
162
00:17:55,280 --> 00:17:57,400
He was also there when he first learned,
163
00:17:57,480 --> 00:18:00,760
as part of a very well-funded,
164
00:18:00,840 --> 00:18:03,000
both practical, but intellectual background,
165
00:18:03,080 --> 00:18:04,720
part of that, he learned to draw
166
00:18:04,800 --> 00:18:07,920
from casts, but also from engravings.
167
00:18:09,320 --> 00:18:12,160
And the year that he graduated,
168
00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:16,760
also signed on to become a copyist in the Biblioth?que nationale,
169
00:18:16,840 --> 00:18:20,000
then called the Biblioth?que imp?riale, and in the Louvre.
170
00:18:22,680 --> 00:18:27,320
He was originally intended by his father to go in for a career in law
171
00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:29,480
and he signed on to do that,
172
00:18:29,560 --> 00:18:32,560
but actually never, ever, went anywhere with it.
173
00:18:32,640 --> 00:18:39,640
And by 1855, he then passes the exams and enters the ?cole des beaux-arts,
174
00:18:39,720 --> 00:18:42,920
as a student of one of the most prestigious art schools in Paris,
175
00:18:43,040 --> 00:18:44,400
and perhaps in Europe.
176
00:18:48,080 --> 00:18:52,560
"I asked Degas, how is a painter to learn his m?tier?
177
00:18:53,480 --> 00:18:57,920
'He should copy the masters, and recopy them', he replied.
178
00:18:58,760 --> 00:19:03,160
'And after he has given every evidence of being a good copyist,
179
00:19:03,240 --> 00:19:08,280
he might then reasonably be allowed to do a radish, perhaps, from nature.'"
180
00:19:11,880 --> 00:19:15,440
Degas' earliest hero was Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,
181
00:19:15,520 --> 00:19:16,720
the great draughtsman,
182
00:19:16,800 --> 00:19:19,720
who was one of the most distinguished artists
183
00:19:19,800 --> 00:19:21,680
in mid-19th-century France,
184
00:19:21,760 --> 00:19:24,320
along, of course, with his great rival, Delacroix.
185
00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:39,840
What was very marking for Degas, was that he actually met Ingres.
186
00:19:39,920 --> 00:19:45,400
He met him in 1855 through a school friend, really,
187
00:19:45,480 --> 00:19:49,760
whose father owned what is now called The Valpin?on Bather,
188
00:19:49,840 --> 00:19:54,640
a beautiful curvaceous view of the back of a lady,
189
00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:58,120
apparently in an Oriental bathing setting.
190
00:19:58,200 --> 00:20:03,600
Very interesting that it's a bather that Degas found most compelling
191
00:20:03,680 --> 00:20:05,840
in Ingres' work.
192
00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:13,440
He would repeat to others and write down what Ingres had said to him
193
00:20:13,520 --> 00:20:15,320
when he was an aspiring artist,
194
00:20:15,400 --> 00:20:19,400
"To draw lines, young man, to draw lots of lines,
195
00:20:19,480 --> 00:20:22,040
and that's the way you'll become a great artist."
196
00:20:22,120 --> 00:20:27,160
And it's unquestionable that Degas did become, like...
197
00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:29,920
like Ingres, one of the greatest draughtsmen,
198
00:20:30,040 --> 00:20:31,920
certainly of the 19th century.
199
00:20:36,200 --> 00:20:38,040
"I was at his house once.
200
00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:41,400
I had a letter of introduction to him.
201
00:20:41,480 --> 00:20:45,240
I can't tell you how excited I was at the prospect.
202
00:20:45,840 --> 00:20:49,080
To think of meeting the great Ingres!
203
00:20:50,040 --> 00:20:53,360
Just as I was leaving, he was taken with a dizzy spell
204
00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:55,480
and began to reel.
205
00:20:56,320 --> 00:21:00,520
Fortunately, I was near enough to catch him before he fell."
206
00:21:02,720 --> 00:21:07,600
Degas lasted for not more than a couple of terms
207
00:21:07,680 --> 00:21:12,880
before he really took his art training into his own hands,
208
00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:15,800
and went to spend three years in Italy.
209
00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:44,720
"If one wants to travel alone,
210
00:21:44,800 --> 00:21:47,800
one must visit areas full of works of art.
211
00:21:51,720 --> 00:21:56,360
Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.
212
00:21:59,400 --> 00:22:05,120
I feel remorse for having seen so many beautiful things already.
213
00:22:08,120 --> 00:22:12,440
Everything breathes an atmosphere of prayer.
214
00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:15,640
Everything is beautiful.
215
00:22:15,720 --> 00:22:18,440
The details. The whole.
216
00:22:19,120 --> 00:22:21,840
I would rather do nothing
217
00:22:21,920 --> 00:22:25,720
than do a rough sketch without having looked at anything.
218
00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:29,480
My memories will do better."
219
00:22:40,920 --> 00:22:43,040
Through his travels in Italy,
220
00:22:43,120 --> 00:22:47,280
Degas encountered a wide range of classical antiquities,
221
00:22:47,360 --> 00:22:51,360
in the form of sculpture, mosaics, and wall paintings,
222
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:53,400
as well as works by the most celebrated
223
00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:55,880
painters and sculptors of the Renaissance,
224
00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:59,280
making copies in notebooks as an aide-m?moire.
225
00:23:07,640 --> 00:23:10,480
When he returned to Paris in 1860,
226
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:15,200
Degas found a spacious studio and started to work intensely.
227
00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:21,840
He made many careful drawings of historic paintings and sculptures,
228
00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:25,200
often frequenting the Louvre and other institutions.
229
00:23:26,080 --> 00:23:30,560
He began a series of large paintings with historical subject matter
230
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:35,200
that demonstrated a developing fusion of traditional observation
231
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:36,840
and his own ideas.
232
00:23:45,080 --> 00:23:46,760
I think he felt ambitious on behalf
233
00:23:46,840 --> 00:23:49,640
of this tradition that dated back to the 17th century.
234
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:53,480
And the feeling that he was getting and that many of the critics
235
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:56,240
and the young artists were getting in the 1860s
236
00:23:56,320 --> 00:23:58,800
that that tradition was kind of petering out
237
00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:01,040
and that there was something called "modernity"
238
00:24:01,120 --> 00:24:05,480
that required a new form and a new kind of visual expression,
239
00:24:05,560 --> 00:24:08,440
that Degas was committed to meeting this challenge.
240
00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:13,280
It's very interesting to wonder about what his life was like at that stage.
241
00:24:13,360 --> 00:24:15,560
His family is terribly worried about him.
242
00:24:15,640 --> 00:24:18,240
He doesn't get out, he's in the studio all the time.
243
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:19,600
He has no life.
244
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,840
He is focusing very rigorously
245
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:26,920
on trying to produce works which will make him a name.
246
00:24:43,120 --> 00:24:45,640
It was around this time that he started painting
247
00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:49,320
one of his early masterpieces, The Bellelli Family,
248
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:53,240
a group portrait of his aunt Laure and her family in Italy.
249
00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:57,880
Laure is dressed in black and mourning the death of her father,
250
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:00,440
shown in a portrait on the back wall.
251
00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:05,480
The Baron Bellelli is a journalist in exile for his nationalist views
252
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:08,520
and sits apart with his back to us.
253
00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:13,000
Their daughters, Giulia and Giovanna, are poised around their mother.
254
00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:19,240
When you're talking about a portrait, there's bound to be
255
00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:23,200
a degree of realism or naturalism or whatever you want to call it.
256
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:27,680
He's introducing, intentionally,
257
00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:31,240
the sense of conflict in the family relations,
258
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:34,720
which normally, in portraiture, you would gloss over.
259
00:25:35,120 --> 00:25:38,440
You would not want to alert your audience
260
00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:43,200
to the fact that there are clearly tensions between husband and wife.
261
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:46,880
And he clearly sympathises with his aunt,
262
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:49,840
the standing family female figure.
263
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:51,560
Whereas his uncle
264
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:53,480
has his back to us.
265
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:58,640
And I think that what's radical about this painting,
266
00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:02,400
as both a family composition, but also a portrait,
267
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:07,200
is the way in which Degas chooses to highlight
268
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,400
not the happy family,
269
00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:12,160
but actually to suggest to us
270
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:16,800
that there's something really quite unpleasant going on here.
271
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:21,120
The main female figure, his aunt,
272
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:25,360
is on one side of the canvas and then it divides in two.
273
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:30,000
And on the right side of the canvas, is the uncle.
274
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:34,280
And the younger daughter, who is clearly divided
275
00:26:34,360 --> 00:26:39,680
between her mother and her father, who sort of bridges that gap.
276
00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:43,400
But basically, it's a painting of two halves.
277
00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:47,240
Various gazes in the painting are obviously really quite crucial.
278
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:51,160
The only engagement is with one of the children, visually.
279
00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:52,640
Eye contact.
280
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:57,040
So the sense of unease is very powerful.
281
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:09,640
"Make portraits of people in typical, familiar poses,
282
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,520
being sure, above all, to give their faces
283
00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:15,120
the same kind of expression as their bodies.
284
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:19,600
Thus, if laughter typifies an individual,
285
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:21,160
make her laugh.
286
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:23,080
There are, of course,
287
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:28,520
feelings which one can not convey out of propriety,
288
00:27:28,600 --> 00:27:33,040
as portraits are not intended for us painters alone."
289
00:27:37,360 --> 00:27:42,400
"He recalls the manner ingenious of Holbein in his portraits.
290
00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:45,560
And nowhere more strictly than in his portrait of his father
291
00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:49,280
listening to Pagans, the celebrated singer and guitarist.
292
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:56,680
The musician sits in the foreground singing out of the picture.
293
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:00,880
Upon the black clothes, the yellow instrument
294
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:02,840
is drawn sharply.
295
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:07,880
The square jaws, the prominent nostrils, the large eyes,
296
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:12,160
in a word, all the racial characteristics of the Southern singer,
297
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:16,360
are set down with that incisive, that merciless force,
298
00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:18,280
which is Holbein."
299
00:28:22,360 --> 00:28:24,560
Until the mid-1860s,
300
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:29,160
copying provided Degas with one of the most direct ways of observing
301
00:28:29,240 --> 00:28:31,360
and developing his skills as an artist.
302
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:35,800
But he also repeatedly emphasised the importance of being able
303
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:39,840
to draw on a well-trained visual memory bank.
304
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:43,320
Versed in literature and the classics,
305
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:46,360
Degas embarked on a series of history paintings
306
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:50,200
that included Young Spartans Exercising,
307
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:54,480
and the curious Alexander and Bucephalus,
308
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:58,040
which remained unfinished and unresolved.
309
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:01,680
Then, in 1865, he completed
310
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:04,000
Scene of War in the Middle Ages,
311
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:08,240
and submitted to the Acad?mie des beaux-arts' Annual Salon.
312
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:27,480
It's a very curious thing to have submitted as your salon debut.
313
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:32,640
Of all these attempts at painting subjects on historical themes,
314
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:36,880
some of them on a vast scale, almost two metres wide,
315
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:41,680
he only ever exhibited one of them, the Scene of War in the Middle Ages.
316
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:45,840
It's an oil painting, but it doesn't look like an oil painting
317
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:47,040
as we know it.
318
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:49,600
It's an oil painting using a medium of essence
319
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:53,480
where the oil is sort of diluted to a point with white spirit
320
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:56,800
that he then applies it to paper, not to canvas.
321
00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:01,160
And it sinks in and creates this incredibly opaque quality
322
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:05,000
so it's more like a fresco painting, or even like a pastel,
323
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:08,200
which he, in fact, exhibited in a room of pastels.
324
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:12,160
That painting was one which, of course,
325
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:14,480
held a great deal of importance for Degas.
326
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:18,120
We know that he kept it in his studio, he didn't sell it.
327
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:20,440
It was completely overlooked by critics.
328
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:22,760
It's a strange painting.
329
00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:28,000
It's a painting in which you can see the elements he studied very carefully
330
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:34,000
and they're placed all over, not the canvas, but the piece of paper.
331
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:38,920
And it's got this very odd, deep-frozen effect,
332
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:43,280
which for a subject which is about rape, pillage,
333
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:46,640
setting fire to an entire town in the background,
334
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:50,280
is an extraordinary approach to treating any theme,
335
00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:52,360
never mind one of such violence.
336
00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:27,760
In 1862, Degas met Manet, ?douard Manet, at the Louvre.
337
00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:30,280
They were both working as copyists.
338
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:33,600
And they had a very interesting dynamic,
339
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:40,040
a very friendly at times and, in the end, very unfriendly relationship,
340
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:42,560
and a sort of competitive relationship.
341
00:31:42,640 --> 00:31:47,360
Manet really introduced him to the circle of artists
342
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:50,600
that we now think of as the Impressionists
343
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:54,560
in the caf? scenes of the 9th arrondissement,
344
00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:57,280
so artists like Pissarro,
345
00:31:57,360 --> 00:31:58,720
Renoir,
346
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:00,520
and Monet.
347
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:07,240
"From the first meeting, Manet invited me to join him
348
00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:10,160
every evening in a caf? at the Batignolles
349
00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:13,640
where he and his friends would gather to talk at the end of a day
350
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:15,560
spent at their studios.
351
00:32:16,080 --> 00:32:19,680
I would meet there Fantin-Latour and C?zanne,
352
00:32:19,760 --> 00:32:23,160
Degas, who arrived shortly afterwards from Italy,
353
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:25,240
the art critic Duranty,
354
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:28,560
Emile Zola who was just starting off in the literary world,
355
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:30,360
and a number of others.
356
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:33,640
I would take Sisley, Bazille and Renoir.
357
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:37,440
There was nothing more interesting than these discussions
358
00:32:37,520 --> 00:32:40,600
with their perpetual differences of opinion.
359
00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:44,640
Our minds and souls were stimulated."
360
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:50,360
It's there, too, that Degas meets a lot of writers,
361
00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:56,840
writers who would be supportive of the Realist movement to which he subscribed.
362
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:02,560
Realism, with a capital R, at the time was an artistic movement
363
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:09,320
which had begun around 1848 with artists like Millet and Courbet,
364
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:13,360
taken up then by the great artist Manet,
365
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:17,720
who was already working in a more Realist style
366
00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:21,800
when Degas was still working in history painting, effectively.
367
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:28,320
I think the trouble with categories like Realism,
368
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:31,240
Impressionism, Post-Impressionism,
369
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:36,240
in a way they're very convenient for us historically, looking back,
370
00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:39,880
and for organising exhibitions and so forth,
371
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:41,400
but actually at the time,
372
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:46,560
the whole issue would have been much more nuanced and complex.
373
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:52,640
Degas saw himself as an independent, rather than an Impressionist.
374
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:58,280
He didn't like the title "Impressionist" that got associated,
375
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:04,360
in 1874 and thereafter, with the Impressionist exhibitions.
376
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:07,320
He wanted the group to be called "the Independents".
377
00:34:08,199 --> 00:34:11,719
Impressionism tends to be associated with outdoors,
378
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,520
landscape painting, plein air,
379
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:21,679
with immediacy, with direct painting, with no changes, with spontaneity,
380
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:26,280
which of course is, in itself, in fact really problematic.
381
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:30,719
But for Degas the opposite was the case.
382
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:33,520
He was someone who was,
383
00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:37,239
not just because he was grounded in the academic tradition,
384
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:43,600
but in terms of his personality, his... the artist he was,
385
00:34:43,679 --> 00:34:47,760
was someone for whom things were never finished.
386
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:52,560
Things went on and on and on, he worked over and over and over.
387
00:34:52,639 --> 00:34:58,640
He said himself that no one was less spontaneous than he.
388
00:34:59,720 --> 00:35:03,680
In a sense, he's associated with the Impressionist group
389
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:09,040
for strategic reasons, for friendship reasons,
390
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:14,720
for, in a sense, artistic avant-garde reasons,
391
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:19,120
the sense that he was involved in a new movement.
392
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:23,680
He had a lot of new things to say, so to associate himself with a group
393
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,720
where he could exhibit and sell his work
394
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:31,560
and make his name as a radical independent,
395
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,840
was very convenient, was very useful.
396
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:59,400
Degas made his first studies of horses in 1861
397
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:03,880
while visiting Paul Valpin?on, a childhood friend in Normandy.
398
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:12,680
Scene from the Steeplechase is a highly dramatic painting,
399
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:16,080
depicting the perilous nature of what was a relatively new
400
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:18,160
but dangerous sporting event.
401
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:23,240
Like Manet, Degas chose a rather generic title
402
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:26,800
as if he were merely documenting a scene in a realist way,
403
00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:30,480
drawing more emphasis to the drama and action.
404
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:36,080
The first collectors must have been impressed
405
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:39,200
by the way Degas put on the canvas
406
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:43,880
the intensity of the instant and the freshness of the colours.
407
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:49,720
It's bright green, nice, sweet pink, purple,
408
00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:53,520
very flashy colours, so it's almost like a fresh, new look
409
00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:56,760
on what one could be able to see at the time.
410
00:37:56,840 --> 00:37:58,480
When they are in a race,
411
00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:02,520
Degas always chooses the moment right after or right before the race,
412
00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:06,600
where you see the animal in preparation,
413
00:38:06,680 --> 00:38:09,520
where you are the spectator,
414
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:12,560
without having them know that you're watching them.
415
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:45,800
Degas makes a note to himself
416
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:49,440
about the importance of painting his own time.
417
00:38:49,520 --> 00:38:53,520
That's very much a sort of leitmotif, if not battle cry,
418
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:56,040
of artists at this period
419
00:38:56,120 --> 00:39:02,000
where he began to meet a number of musicians and composers
420
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:05,080
who were attached to the Paris Opera,
421
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:10,000
bassoon players and a Catalan composer called Dihau.
422
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:13,760
And so, he was beginning to enter this world
423
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:16,280
which would provide much of the subject matter
424
00:39:16,360 --> 00:39:18,480
for the Degas that we now know.
425
00:39:22,040 --> 00:39:25,560
With the onset of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870,
426
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:31,000
Degas interrupted his artistic practice to volunteer for the National Guard.
427
00:39:31,080 --> 00:39:33,080
He was posted to Normandy,
428
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:37,600
where training exercises revealed the poor state of his eyesight.
429
00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:41,760
He was re-assigned to Paris as a lieutenant in the Garrison Artillery
430
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:45,520
until the French surrendered in 1871.
431
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:53,680
"I have just had and still have
432
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:57,720
a spot of weakness and trouble in my eyes.
433
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:02,840
It caught me at Chatou by the edge of the water in full sunlight
434
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:04,760
whilst I was doing a watercolour.
435
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:06,760
It made me lose nearly three weeks,
436
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:11,160
being unable to read or work or go out much,
437
00:40:11,240 --> 00:40:16,080
trembling all the time lest I should remain like that."
438
00:40:49,280 --> 00:40:52,520
I've never really had perfect eyesight,
439
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:57,800
and from the age of about 12 was short-sighted,
440
00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:00,080
and then through a kind of adolescent vanity
441
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:04,640
spent most of my teenage years in a kind of myopic haze,
442
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:07,640
quite impressionist really.
443
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:14,840
But, curiously, I think that makes you very attentive
444
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:17,360
to how we see things in general,
445
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:22,080
and there's different degrees to which vision might change
446
00:41:22,160 --> 00:41:24,040
in different circumstances.
447
00:41:25,840 --> 00:41:30,320
Degas overcame the shortcomings of his own vision,
448
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:35,320
to arrive at a form where he moved into a kind of tactility.
449
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:41,360
The late pastels come quite close to suggesting the kind of sensations,
450
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:45,200
the experience of touching a body, touching material.
451
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:49,720
It brings into play the other senses besides sight and vision.
452
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:58,320
Very fortunately, I don't suffer from irredeemably damaged eyesight
453
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:00,920
in the way Degas did later on.
454
00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:05,080
I think there are people who have clinically perfect eyesight,
455
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:11,560
are strangely blind to certain aspects of the experience of artworks.
456
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:17,400
That they don't actually encounter the real experience
457
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:22,640
of seeing what's happening in a painting or a sculpture in front of their eyes
458
00:42:22,720 --> 00:42:26,040
because perhaps they're led by what they anticipate seeing
459
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:31,520
by the narrative, by the language, by what they're being told about a work.
460
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:36,080
So it's actually quite difficult to allow yourself to encounter work
461
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:37,560
in a sensuous way
462
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:42,720
without all these other sort of pre-conditions affecting what you see.
463
00:42:45,720 --> 00:42:48,800
After the war, Degas travelled with his brother Ren?
464
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:53,000
to New Orleans, Louisiana, to visit some relatives.
465
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:56,800
The artist painted several portraits of family members
466
00:42:56,880 --> 00:42:59,840
which culminated in an epic group portrait,
467
00:42:59,920 --> 00:43:02,760
The Cotton Office in New Orleans.
468
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:07,080
This included his uncle in the foreground, inspecting cotton,
469
00:43:09,240 --> 00:43:12,920
one leaning at a window and the other reading a paper.
470
00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:19,400
"I have attached myself to a fairly vigorous picture.
471
00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:24,760
In it there are about 15 individuals
472
00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:27,400
more or less occupied with a table
473
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:31,160
covered with the precious material and two men,
474
00:43:31,240 --> 00:43:35,720
one half leaning and the other half sitting on it,
475
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:39,720
the buyer and the broker, are discussing a pattern.
476
00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:44,560
A raw picture if there ever was one,
477
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:47,880
and I think from a better hand than many another.
478
00:43:48,720 --> 00:43:53,560
What lovely things I could have done, and done rapidly
479
00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:57,480
if the bright daylight were less unbearable for me.
480
00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:01,440
The women are pretty and unusually graceful.
481
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:07,840
The black world, I have not the time to explore it.
482
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:12,600
There are some real treasures as regards drawing and colour
483
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:15,040
in these forests of ebony.
484
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:20,520
I shall be very surprised to live among white people only in Paris.
485
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:26,240
And then I love silhouettes so much and these silhouettes walk."
486
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:36,160
His father died in 1874 leaving large debts
487
00:44:36,240 --> 00:44:40,720
that forced Degas to rely on selling his art to generate an income.
488
00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:44,080
The Cotton Office in New Orleans was exhibited
489
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:48,240
in the second Impressionist exhibition of 1876
490
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:53,160
and was the first painting by the artist to enter the French public collections
491
00:44:53,240 --> 00:44:58,680
when it was acquired in 1878 by the Mus?e des beaux-arts in Pau.
492
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:02,560
He joined the Durand-Ruel Gallery
493
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:07,080
where his work started to sell to collectors looking for something new.
494
00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:14,520
"Here Durand-Ruel assures me of his devotion
495
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:17,920
and swears he wants everything I do.
496
00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:23,120
My eyes are not so bad but all the same,
497
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:26,800
I shall remain in the ranks of the infirm
498
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:30,520
until I pass into the ranks of the blind.
499
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:35,720
It really is bitter, is it not?
500
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:38,640
Sometimes I feel a shiver of horror.
501
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:43,440
Durand-Ruel takes everything I do, but scarcely sells anything.
502
00:45:44,720 --> 00:45:50,160
Manet, always confident, says he is keeping us for the "bonne bouche",
503
00:45:50,240 --> 00:45:52,520
the best taste for last.
504
00:45:55,240 --> 00:45:57,560
Paul Durand-Ruel was a visionary figure.
505
00:45:57,640 --> 00:46:00,840
Not only did he decide to defend the artists in whom he believed
506
00:46:00,920 --> 00:46:02,560
and who were alive at his time,
507
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:06,200
but he completely redefined the role of the art dealer.
508
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:10,560
When Durand-Ruel fell in love with the production of an artist,
509
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:15,680
he decided to buy everything he could and ask the artist for exclusivity,
510
00:46:15,760 --> 00:46:18,600
in exchange of a monthly payment
511
00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:23,120
which would then financially support the artist's day-to-day life.
512
00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:28,760
In his memoirs, he first saw the pictures of Degas at the official Salon,
513
00:46:28,840 --> 00:46:31,520
starting in 1868, in 1869.
514
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:35,600
And actually, in the Salon of 1870, Degas exhibits two pictures
515
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:38,080
which are, each of them, a portrait of a woman,
516
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:41,000
and Durand-Ruel asks to buy one of them,
517
00:46:41,080 --> 00:46:43,760
but Degas says, "No, unfortunately, they're not for sale."
518
00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:48,680
So this is a stock book of the Durand-Ruel Gallery
519
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:51,880
from 1868 until 1873.
520
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:55,640
That's where you find all the purchases made by the gallery,
521
00:46:55,720 --> 00:46:59,640
from whom the pictures are bought, when, at what price.
522
00:46:59,720 --> 00:47:02,080
And, for example, here you have the first two Degas
523
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:03,640
purchased by Durand-Ruel.
524
00:47:03,720 --> 00:47:06,200
You have the stock number, the name of the artist,
525
00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:08,840
the title of the piece, L'Orchestre de l'Op?ra,
526
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:10,480
The Opera Orchestra.
527
00:47:10,560 --> 00:47:17,080
Le Foyer de la Danse, purchased from Degas in January 1872.
528
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:21,440
One is for 1,500 French francs and the other one for 1,000 francs.
529
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:26,800
And on the next page, you see whether Durand-Ruel is able to sell them,
530
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:32,560
and you see the second one is sold to Mr Brandon in exchange of pictures.
531
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:49,320
"Look here, my dear Tissot, no hesitations, no escape.
532
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:52,520
You positively must exhibit at the Boulevard.
533
00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:56,040
It will do you good, you... and us too.
534
00:47:56,600 --> 00:48:01,000
Manet seems determined to keep aloof, he may well regret it.
535
00:48:01,720 --> 00:48:05,080
Yesterday I saw the arrangement of the premises,
536
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:09,760
the hangings and the effect in daylight. It is as good as anywhere.
537
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:13,240
I am getting really worked up and am running the thing with energy
538
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:16,640
and, I think, a certain success.
539
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:23,400
it already is, it exists.
540
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,600
It must show itself as something distinct,
541
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:29,560
there must be a salon of Realists.
542
00:48:30,200 --> 00:48:32,400
Manet does not understand that.
543
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:35,160
I definitely think he is more vain than intelligent.
544
00:48:35,240 --> 00:48:38,280
So forget the money side for a moment.
545
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:43,040
Exhibit! Be of your country and with your friends."
546
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:49,640
It seems that Degas played an important role
547
00:48:49,720 --> 00:48:52,600
in organising some of the Impressionist exhibitions,
548
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:55,680
and it's quite contradictory to the fact that, indeed,
549
00:48:55,760 --> 00:49:00,920
Degas is more of a portrait painter, or ballerinas painter,
550
00:49:01,040 --> 00:49:04,360
or nudes, or horses,
551
00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:08,720
but he's not what we called then and we can call today a "landscape painter".
552
00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:11,080
It was not what interested him.
553
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:16,600
He did accept and he wanted the group to be together
554
00:49:16,680 --> 00:49:20,520
but Degas was not so interested by plein air pictures
555
00:49:20,600 --> 00:49:22,280
or plein air painters,
556
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:26,560
going outside, outdoors, to paint what you could see.
557
00:49:31,240 --> 00:49:33,200
I think some of the defining characteristics
558
00:49:33,280 --> 00:49:36,520
of doing his art practice are essentially that it's studio based.
559
00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:38,400
That's quite an important thing to think about
560
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:41,440
in terms of our ideas of him as an Impressionist.
561
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:49,160
Also an extraordinary ability to combine a discipline and a rigour
562
00:49:49,240 --> 00:49:55,080
with incredible waywardness and technical experimentation,
563
00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:59,680
often with very, very unconventional procedures.
564
00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:05,920
"Just an occasional glance out of the window is enough
565
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:07,640
when I am travelling.
566
00:50:07,720 --> 00:50:11,720
I can get along very well without even going out of my own house.
567
00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:14,560
With a bowl of soup and three old brushes,
568
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:18,640
you can make the finest landscape ever painted.
569
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:21,840
I met Monet himself and I said to him,
570
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:27,000
'Let me get out of here. Those reflections in the water hurt my eyes!'
571
00:50:28,560 --> 00:50:32,320
His pictures were always too draughty for me!
572
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:36,200
If it had been any worse I should have had to turn up my coat collar.
573
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:39,920
You see, the air you breathe in a picture
574
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:44,840
is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors."
575
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:26,800
Of course, we know of Degas as an impressionist painter,
576
00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:30,240
terminology that he himself resisted in his lifetime.
577
00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:32,880
So what is important to understand about Au Caf?,
578
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:36,040
point number one, is that it's unfinished.
579
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:40,320
And the questions and the sort of narrative that it invites,
580
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:42,600
we really have to take that into account.
581
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:47,560
How we interpret who these women are, what the dynamic between them is;
582
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:51,080
it's really dependent on understanding that he hasn't finished it.
583
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:55,840
What he has done, which again is unlike a lot of his fellow Impressionists,
584
00:51:55,920 --> 00:51:58,840
is that he follows in the academic tradition
585
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:02,840
of using a form of monochrome painting,
586
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:05,640
or near monochrome painting, in black or grey,
587
00:52:05,720 --> 00:52:08,080
and sometimes in other colours and beiges,
588
00:52:08,160 --> 00:52:10,560
blacks and greys, with white highlights.
589
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:14,480
He maps out the terrain, he maps out the composition in that first
590
00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:16,640
and then works over it.
591
00:52:16,720 --> 00:52:19,600
And that, of course, is unlike what we know of the Impressionists,
592
00:52:19,680 --> 00:52:22,160
whose approach was more spontaneous.
593
00:52:22,240 --> 00:52:26,360
Degas himself said, "Nothing about my art is spontaneous.
594
00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:29,760
What I know is what I've learned from the great masters."
595
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:32,000
Using brush strokes which don't actually make any sense,
596
00:52:32,080 --> 00:52:34,520
we don't quite know what the background is supposed to represent,
597
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:36,920
but he's laying it in. It's in progress.
598
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:45,200
Painting, drawing, making sculptures, it's like physical thinking at times.
599
00:52:45,280 --> 00:52:48,880
There is a haptic aspect to painting,
600
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:54,920
and by that I mean things to do with the kind of muscle memory of the hand.
601
00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:58,640
Degas had built up a lifetime's experience
602
00:52:58,720 --> 00:53:02,600
of describing human and animal forms and landscapes,
603
00:53:02,680 --> 00:53:05,000
and some of that becomes innate,
604
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:08,680
embedded in your bodily movements when you're working
605
00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:12,400
and that creates a particular and complex relationship
606
00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:15,520
between the work itself, and our idea of time.
607
00:53:15,600 --> 00:53:17,600
A painting, unlike a film,
608
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:19,720
doesn't really insist that you look at it
609
00:53:19,800 --> 00:53:21,200
for a certain amount of time.
610
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:23,800
You can have a glance at it, go away for 20 years,
611
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:27,520
and come back and revisit the same painting, which I've done.
612
00:53:28,520 --> 00:53:33,280
I think we can be fairly sure that Degas finished a work
613
00:53:33,360 --> 00:53:35,480
when he exhibited it.
614
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:37,320
We know that he was very particular
615
00:53:37,400 --> 00:53:40,200
about how he mounted drawings, for example.
616
00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:44,480
He also cared deeply about the sorts of frames he used for his paintings.
617
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:33,160
There's one word which could describe Degas' personality,
618
00:54:33,240 --> 00:54:34,760
and that's probably "complex",
619
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:38,800
but that's a pretty unhelpful cover-all term
620
00:54:38,880 --> 00:54:42,640
to describe what we understand from letters,
621
00:54:42,720 --> 00:54:48,040
from the notes he makes to himself, recollections of him by other people.
622
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:54,440
It's hard to piece together a single description of his personality.
623
00:54:57,720 --> 00:55:00,680
"At dinner every Friday, at Monsieur Rouart's,
624
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:03,120
Degas would be the soul of the evening.
625
00:55:03,200 --> 00:55:08,600
A constant, brilliant, unbearable guest, spreading wit, terror, and gaiety.
626
00:55:08,680 --> 00:55:14,800
A piercing mimic, with an endless fund of whims, maxims, banter, anecdotes,
627
00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:17,040
brilliantly unfair in his attacks,
628
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:21,920
infallible in his taste, narrow-mindedly yet lucidly passionate.
629
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:25,800
He was always throwing mud at writers, at the Institut,
630
00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:31,080
at the aloof poseurs, and the artists who were bent on getting there.
631
00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:33,120
I can still hear him.
632
00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:40,040
His host, who worshipped him, listened indulgently, admiringly,
633
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:45,640
while the other guests, young people, ancient generals, speechless ladies,
634
00:55:45,720 --> 00:55:51,280
listened with varying degrees of enjoyment while this prodigious aphorist
635
00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:56,760
exercised his irony, his aesthetic acuity,
636
00:55:56,840 --> 00:55:58,840
and his vehemence."
637
00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:57,040
"Dance, urchin with wings, on the wooden lawns.
638
00:56:57,120 --> 00:57:01,120
Your thin arm in place on the ordered line
639
00:57:01,200 --> 00:57:05,320
gives balance at once to your flight and your weight.
640
00:57:06,520 --> 00:57:11,520
I, who knew you, want for you an illustrious life.
641
00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:16,920
Nymphs, Graces, come down from the summits of old.
642
00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:22,280
Taglioni, come, princess of Arcady,
643
00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:25,920
To ennoble and shape with a smile at my choice,
644
00:57:26,040 --> 00:57:29,920
this new little thing with the impudent face.
645
00:57:30,040 --> 00:57:34,240
If Montmartre has given the spirit and kin,
646
00:57:34,320 --> 00:57:37,640
Roxelane the nose and China the eyes,
647
00:57:37,720 --> 00:57:42,440
Ariel in your turn, give to this new recruit
648
00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:47,720
your light step for daytime, your light step for night.
649
00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:53,440
But for my taste, may she keep the scent of her fruit
650
00:57:53,520 --> 00:57:59,640
and in palaces golden, the race of her street."
651
00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:07,600
Today when we see sculptures of the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen,
652
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:09,280
they're almost always,
653
00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:11,560
except in the National Gallery of Art in Washington
654
00:58:11,640 --> 00:58:16,200
where the original wax is housed, they're bronze casts.
655
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:20,040
And these bronze casts were made after Degas' death
656
00:58:20,120 --> 00:58:22,320
with permission from his heirs.
657
00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:27,360
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen
658
00:58:27,440 --> 00:58:32,320
is a portrait of a young ballerina from the Paris Opera.
659
00:58:32,400 --> 00:58:34,120
Degas loved the Paris Opera,
660
00:58:34,200 --> 00:58:37,720
and went sometimes more than once or twice a week,
661
00:58:37,800 --> 00:58:42,120
and he, I think, was really taken with the ballerina's body,
662
00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:44,400
and movement, and gesture.
663
00:58:45,080 --> 00:58:49,320
This is the only one that he finished and exhibited, it's a wax sculpture,
664
00:58:49,400 --> 00:58:54,200
so he dressed up this wax sculpture of this young girl with a real tutu,
665
00:58:54,280 --> 00:58:58,800
and real hair, and ribbons, and ballet slippers.
666
00:58:59,720 --> 00:59:02,560
She was a girl called Marie van Goethem.
667
00:59:02,640 --> 00:59:06,480
She was the daughter of a Belgian tailor and a laundress,
668
00:59:06,560 --> 00:59:09,200
so she was from a lower-class background.
669
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:14,480
She was one of the young women who trained at the Paris Opera,
670
00:59:14,560 --> 00:59:17,160
commonly called "petits rats", the little rats,
671
00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:19,400
a reference to perhaps when they scampered around
672
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:23,320
in the foyer and the corridors of the Opera.
673
00:59:25,440 --> 00:59:30,080
I think it's really fascinating, the contrast between the way we perceive
674
00:59:30,160 --> 00:59:34,640
Degas' Little Dancer of Fourteen Years now by comparison
675
00:59:34,720 --> 00:59:37,640
to how it was seen at the time.
676
00:59:37,720 --> 00:59:44,240
Because, of course, it had been signalled as in progress in 1879,
677
00:59:44,320 --> 00:59:48,800
then in 1880, it was actually in the catalogue for the exhibition,
678
00:59:48,880 --> 00:59:55,480
but instead of showing the dancer, he just showed the glass box
679
00:59:55,560 --> 00:59:57,880
in which it would be displayed the following year.
680
00:59:58,000 --> 01:00:02,280
It's really fascinating, because of course these were the vitrines
681
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:06,360
that were used for medical displays,
682
01:00:07,080 --> 01:00:09,880
not for artworks at this time.
683
01:00:10,000 --> 01:00:14,000
He is setting the scene for how it will be received.
684
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:17,200
And when the work is actually exhibited,
685
01:00:17,280 --> 01:00:23,160
the critics will react to it as a medical sample,
686
01:00:23,240 --> 01:00:25,520
as a medical object,
687
01:00:25,600 --> 01:00:28,760
and the medium he's using, the wax medium,
688
01:00:28,840 --> 01:00:35,920
is, of course, par excellence the medium which is used for medical specimens.
689
01:00:36,040 --> 01:00:42,640
So for it to be used as the medium for a real sculpture,
690
01:00:42,720 --> 01:00:45,160
rather than merely a medical example,
691
01:00:45,240 --> 01:00:47,360
was very radical,
692
01:00:47,440 --> 01:00:53,880
but also very explosive in terms of a female figure,
693
01:00:54,000 --> 01:01:00,400
a female body and what he actually produces is a little figure
694
01:01:00,480 --> 01:01:05,880
in which the face is made to look like a simian creature.
695
01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:10,520
And his critics, like Huysmans, absolutely responded accordingly.
696
01:01:10,600 --> 01:01:16,000
They called it a rat, of course, rat is what the ballet chorus were called,
697
01:01:16,080 --> 01:01:17,720
they were called "the rats".
698
01:01:17,800 --> 01:01:20,440
But equally, it was used literally,
699
01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:24,520
because her face was elongated and pointed.
700
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:29,360
So we have something which almost is a crossover between the exhibition
701
01:01:29,440 --> 01:01:31,000
and the freak show,
702
01:01:31,080 --> 01:01:34,120
high art and popular art.
703
01:01:34,200 --> 01:01:39,680
But because it's Degas, because it's brilliant as an object,
704
01:01:39,760 --> 01:01:43,520
because he's brilliant as an artist,
705
01:01:43,600 --> 01:01:48,360
now we see it in terms of an ideal of the dance.
706
01:01:54,440 --> 01:01:57,320
But of course, these were poor girls from Paris
707
01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:00,560
who were trying to earn a living and it was really a hard living,
708
01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:05,000
and I think Degas was fascinated by this confluence
709
01:02:05,080 --> 01:02:10,120
of a very refined high art, classical ballet,
710
01:02:10,200 --> 01:02:14,720
and all of the ideals that this wonderful art form represented,
711
01:02:14,800 --> 01:02:18,560
with these real girls from the Paris arrondissements,
712
01:02:18,640 --> 01:02:22,120
from some of the poorer neighbourhoods, you know, struggling to make a living.
713
01:02:29,480 --> 01:02:32,800
"When Degas' eyesight became so poor
714
01:02:32,880 --> 01:02:35,680
that he could see only with great difficulty,
715
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:38,200
he gave up painting for sculpture.
716
01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:44,040
'I must learn a blind man's trade now.'
717
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:48,040
But this cry of self-pity was somewhat exaggerated.
718
01:02:51,400 --> 01:02:55,800
One day he showed me a little dancer he had done over for the twentieth time.
719
01:02:55,880 --> 01:02:58,880
'I believe I've got it at last,' he announced.
720
01:02:59,560 --> 01:03:03,560
'One or two days more work and it will be ready for the caster.'
721
01:03:04,520 --> 01:03:07,520
The next day, however, all that remained of the little dancing girl
722
01:03:07,600 --> 01:03:10,520
was the original lump of wax from which she had sprung.
723
01:03:11,320 --> 01:03:13,840
Seeing my disappointment,
724
01:03:13,920 --> 01:03:16,920
'All you think of is what it was worth.
725
01:03:18,240 --> 01:03:23,040
But I wouldn't take a bucket of gold for the pleasure I had in destroying it
726
01:03:23,120 --> 01:03:25,720
and beginning over again.'"
727
01:03:46,360 --> 01:03:50,120
The bronzes which we see in exhibitions and museums
728
01:03:50,200 --> 01:03:53,240
throughout the world were cast posthumously
729
01:03:53,320 --> 01:03:57,840
after Degas died with the permission of his heirs.
730
01:04:00,520 --> 01:04:02,680
One of the great rarities in the Fitzwilliam's collection
731
01:04:02,760 --> 01:04:07,240
are three wax statuettes of dancers.
732
01:04:07,320 --> 01:04:11,360
When Degas died in 1917,
733
01:04:11,440 --> 01:04:17,400
the wax sculptures were found in a corner of his studio,
734
01:04:17,480 --> 01:04:20,800
lots of them broken, covered in dust
735
01:04:20,880 --> 01:04:25,440
and in fact, for many people, they brought to mind the sorts of figures
736
01:04:25,520 --> 01:04:28,920
that you would find excavated from an archaeological dig,
737
01:04:29,040 --> 01:04:32,600
notably relating them to Tanagra figurines
738
01:04:32,680 --> 01:04:38,160
which were hugely popular in collecting circles in both France and Britain
739
01:04:38,240 --> 01:04:40,560
at the end of the 19th century.
740
01:04:40,640 --> 01:04:42,279
What, of course, we can now tell
741
01:04:42,360 --> 01:04:46,520
through various forms of scientific and technical analysis
742
01:04:46,600 --> 01:04:48,600
is a lot more about how they were made.
743
01:04:48,680 --> 01:04:55,120
And they were made using twisted wire armatures, a lot of his sculptures,
744
01:04:55,200 --> 01:04:56,760
including those in the Fitzwilliam,
745
01:04:56,840 --> 01:05:00,040
are bulked out using different sorts of material.
746
01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:02,920
Either plastiline, what we now call plasticine,
747
01:05:03,040 --> 01:05:05,640
or wine corks, wine bottle corks,
748
01:05:05,720 --> 01:05:09,520
he even used part of a paintbrush to form part of the structure
749
01:05:09,600 --> 01:05:12,400
around which he modelled the figure.
750
01:05:14,680 --> 01:05:17,120
I think he was interested in the performance of women,
751
01:05:17,200 --> 01:05:22,360
whether it was a Parisienne in a caf?, or a courtesan in a caf?,
752
01:05:22,440 --> 01:05:24,920
a ballerina, a prostitute,
753
01:05:25,040 --> 01:05:29,040
who he would sort of follow voyeuristically behind the scenes
754
01:05:29,120 --> 01:05:31,480
into her bathing chamber.
755
01:05:31,560 --> 01:05:35,760
So I think, you know, he was interested in capturing women,
756
01:05:35,840 --> 01:05:39,200
late 19th-century French women in their off moments,
757
01:05:39,279 --> 01:05:41,440
in their non-performative moments.
758
01:05:42,480 --> 01:05:46,760
He does have, historically, a very complex relation
759
01:05:46,840 --> 01:05:49,880
with women and, of course, class again is crucial.
760
01:05:50,000 --> 01:05:55,600
Even more complex when it's a fellow artist, like Mary Cassatt for example,
761
01:05:55,680 --> 01:06:00,160
whom he obviously admired, whose work he thought was really, really strong,
762
01:06:00,240 --> 01:06:06,320
really powerful, and yet represented her in ways which are complex,
763
01:06:06,400 --> 01:06:08,279
which are ambivalent.
764
01:06:08,360 --> 01:06:12,480
They don't celebrate her as an artist in the way, for example,
765
01:06:12,560 --> 01:06:16,520
his portrait of Duranty celebrates Duranty as a writer.
766
01:06:16,600 --> 01:06:21,160
So he can give recognition to a male fellow
767
01:06:21,240 --> 01:06:23,520
in terms of their professional esteem,
768
01:06:23,600 --> 01:06:27,880
but not a fellow artist who was a woman, like Cassatt.
769
01:06:28,640 --> 01:06:34,560
He can hardly be described as having a great number of close female friends,
770
01:06:34,640 --> 01:06:38,560
and clearly he didn't have long-term relations with women either,
771
01:06:38,640 --> 01:06:41,640
although he may well have had prostitutes himself.
772
01:06:41,720 --> 01:06:44,840
Certainly some art historians argue that he did so,
773
01:06:44,920 --> 01:06:49,440
and he was clearly very familiar with life in the brothel,
774
01:06:49,520 --> 01:06:54,440
which one has to assume is actually from direct experience.
775
01:06:54,520 --> 01:06:59,520
But he was not someone for whom anything but art was really crucial.
776
01:07:01,920 --> 01:07:06,360
"I said to Renoir, 'I've heard Lautrec compared with Degas.'
777
01:07:06,440 --> 01:07:10,760
'Ridiculous!', he said, 'Lautrec did some very fine posters,
778
01:07:10,840 --> 01:07:12,400
but that's about all.
779
01:07:12,480 --> 01:07:15,320
Just compare their paintings of coquettes...
780
01:07:15,400 --> 01:07:17,360
why, they're worlds apart!
781
01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:20,520
Lautrec just painted a prostitute,
782
01:07:20,600 --> 01:07:24,480
while Degas painted all prostitutes rolled into one.
783
01:07:25,400 --> 01:07:29,600
Lautrec's prostitutes are vicious, Degas' never.
784
01:07:30,680 --> 01:07:34,640
While others paint a bawdy house, the result is usually pornographic,
785
01:07:34,720 --> 01:07:38,240
always sad to the point of despair.
786
01:07:38,320 --> 01:07:43,080
Degas is the only painter who can combine a certain joyousness,
787
01:07:43,160 --> 01:07:48,240
that chaste, half-religious side, which makes his work so great,
788
01:07:49,200 --> 01:07:52,920
it is at its best when he paints those poor girls.'"
789
01:07:54,920 --> 01:07:57,840
For someone who wants to focus in the kind of obsessional way
790
01:07:57,920 --> 01:08:01,080
that Degas focused,
791
01:08:01,160 --> 01:08:06,400
having a housemaid, a housekeeper, like Zoe, was the perfect answer.
792
01:08:07,320 --> 01:08:10,080
She served all the needs of a wife,
793
01:08:10,160 --> 01:08:15,720
without the sex and without having to take any notice of her as a wife.
794
01:08:16,680 --> 01:08:20,040
Effectively, all the women apart from
795
01:08:20,120 --> 01:08:23,760
the ones he had relationships with socially,
796
01:08:23,840 --> 01:08:25,439
were women he paid,
797
01:08:25,520 --> 01:08:29,520
whether it was models, whether it was Zoe, his housekeeper,
798
01:08:29,600 --> 01:08:33,200
for anything, it was a paid relationship,
799
01:08:33,279 --> 01:08:37,760
so he knew where he stood and had control in that situation.
800
01:08:37,840 --> 01:08:41,520
His relations with women were much more complex,
801
01:08:41,600 --> 01:08:45,319
much more difficult with women of his own class.
802
01:08:45,399 --> 01:08:49,359
However considered his relationship with Cassatt was,
803
01:08:49,440 --> 01:08:52,279
it was nevertheless at arm's length.
804
01:09:47,319 --> 01:09:50,720
"Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses
805
01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:52,800
which presuppose an audience,
806
01:09:52,880 --> 01:09:56,520
but these women of mine are honest, simple folk,
807
01:09:56,600 --> 01:09:58,800
unconcerned by any other interests
808
01:09:58,880 --> 01:10:01,920
than those involved in their physical condition.
809
01:10:03,360 --> 01:10:06,000
It is as if you looked through the keyhole."
810
01:10:11,040 --> 01:10:13,080
What's really remarkable about the drawings
811
01:10:13,160 --> 01:10:15,520
is they feel like they are fleeting moments
812
01:10:15,600 --> 01:10:17,320
where you've just drawn someone
813
01:10:17,400 --> 01:10:21,000
as they're getting dressed or undressed around you,
814
01:10:21,080 --> 01:10:25,559
and they feel like they're very swift drawings but actually, they're not.
815
01:10:25,640 --> 01:10:29,280
They're very, very hard for those models to hold those poses.
816
01:10:29,360 --> 01:10:32,160
They are very physically challenging
817
01:10:32,240 --> 01:10:36,720
and it really made me think about how Degas was working with his models
818
01:10:36,800 --> 01:10:41,760
and the amount of commitment those models would have had to have
819
01:10:41,840 --> 01:10:45,200
to be able to pose for him again and again,
820
01:10:45,280 --> 01:10:48,920
to work very long hours with him, to really work with somebody
821
01:10:49,040 --> 01:10:51,920
who's revisiting the same thing again and again.
822
01:10:52,040 --> 01:10:55,080
Any artist knows, if you've got a good model,
823
01:10:55,160 --> 01:10:56,760
the job is half done.
824
01:10:56,840 --> 01:10:58,320
It's a profession.
825
01:10:58,400 --> 01:11:02,559
You have the same models, if they're really good, will be highly in demand,
826
01:11:02,640 --> 01:11:07,080
will be circulating amongst the key artists' studios,
827
01:11:07,160 --> 01:11:10,040
and there will be competition for their time.
828
01:11:10,120 --> 01:11:15,800
So it was a way in which women could work and be respected at the period.
829
01:11:17,000 --> 01:11:20,640
He doesn't want an individual particular.
830
01:11:20,720 --> 01:11:24,400
It's not a portrait; it's about the body, it's about the action,
831
01:11:24,480 --> 01:11:27,320
it's about the way the body moves and how.
832
01:11:27,400 --> 01:11:32,400
The emphasis is on the animal, the physicality of the body.
833
01:11:32,480 --> 01:11:36,480
And obviously sensual, erotic,
834
01:11:37,400 --> 01:11:39,240
but not a portrait.
835
01:11:39,320 --> 01:11:44,440
This is about other and, in fact, very complex, issues here.
836
01:11:47,120 --> 01:11:51,120
I think the idea of a perfect drawing
837
01:11:51,200 --> 01:11:54,600
is something that Degas is testing.
838
01:11:54,680 --> 01:12:00,120
I think having the confidence to leave mistakes there,
839
01:12:00,200 --> 01:12:04,200
to leave shadows of what wasn't working,
840
01:12:04,280 --> 01:12:07,920
to have the confidence to assert the line
841
01:12:08,040 --> 01:12:09,840
when something is going well for you
842
01:12:09,920 --> 01:12:13,400
or is capturing what you're trying to achieve is really important.
843
01:12:13,480 --> 01:12:15,400
When we're new to drawing,
844
01:12:15,480 --> 01:12:19,600
we don't always want to be seen to be doing something that's bad.
845
01:12:19,680 --> 01:12:22,360
We don't want to be seen to be doing something that looks like a mistake,
846
01:12:22,440 --> 01:12:26,400
but actually, those are the things that are crucial and are valuable.
847
01:12:26,480 --> 01:12:33,160
Degas is working through the drawing to understand something
848
01:12:33,240 --> 01:12:37,000
and therefore the things that aren't working are just as valuable.
849
01:12:37,080 --> 01:12:41,200
You can see his confidence in himself as he looks.
850
01:12:42,200 --> 01:12:47,680
Degas's interest in matter is really fascinating,
851
01:12:47,760 --> 01:12:50,360
because he starts off interested,
852
01:12:50,440 --> 01:12:55,080
or influenced more by the academic tradition, shall we say,
853
01:12:55,160 --> 01:12:58,120
with an artist like Ingres
854
01:12:58,200 --> 01:13:04,480
for whom the important thing was to smooth out matter,
855
01:13:05,520 --> 01:13:10,480
where the brush marks, the signs of making, were not visible.
856
01:13:11,400 --> 01:13:17,600
With Degas, increasingly the work becomes deeply material,
857
01:13:17,680 --> 01:13:22,840
deeply tactile, very much the matter of someone
858
01:13:22,920 --> 01:13:28,200
who is physically engaged with their hands in what they're making.
859
01:13:28,280 --> 01:13:33,800
Not only was he later working much, much more with clay and so forth,
860
01:13:33,880 --> 01:13:40,040
but here with, in fact, the monotypes that he started a few years earlier,
861
01:13:41,120 --> 01:13:44,000
he's working very, very physically.
862
01:13:45,000 --> 01:13:50,880
So there's this sense of the process being absolutely crucial,
863
01:13:51,000 --> 01:13:54,800
the process and his physical engagement with the process
864
01:13:54,880 --> 01:13:58,520
as being almost as important as the end product.
865
01:14:30,640 --> 01:14:34,480
One of the highlights from the Fitzwilliam's own collection,
866
01:14:34,559 --> 01:14:37,160
is a beautiful large pastel,
867
01:14:37,240 --> 01:14:40,680
Two Dancers in Violet Skirts, Arms Raised.
868
01:14:40,760 --> 01:14:45,760
And as part of the process, in preparation for the exhibition,
869
01:14:45,840 --> 01:14:48,200
this work was carefully examined,
870
01:14:48,280 --> 01:14:50,280
and you don't always get the opportunity
871
01:14:50,360 --> 01:14:55,440
to do that with 18,000 drawings in our own collection.
872
01:14:55,520 --> 01:14:59,640
The work was photographed under different wavelengths.
873
01:14:59,720 --> 01:15:02,520
So we have a daylight image,
874
01:15:02,600 --> 01:15:07,520
we have an ultraviolet image and we have an infrared image.
875
01:15:08,160 --> 01:15:11,760
These analysis techniques are especially helpful,
876
01:15:11,840 --> 01:15:14,400
because they're non-invasive,
877
01:15:14,480 --> 01:15:16,680
and they can be quite revealing
878
01:15:16,760 --> 01:15:21,000
about the way the artwork is constructed and built up.
879
01:15:21,720 --> 01:15:25,920
The fluorescence is telling us about the material,
880
01:15:26,040 --> 01:15:30,920
or a part of a material within the make-up of the pastel.
881
01:15:31,040 --> 01:15:35,200
On a number of the works, there's quite a range of media.
882
01:15:35,640 --> 01:15:37,400
You may have some graphite.
883
01:15:37,480 --> 01:15:41,800
More typically, you've got passages of charcoal,
884
01:15:41,880 --> 01:15:46,720
maybe fabricated black chalks, occasionally watercolour.
885
01:15:46,800 --> 01:15:49,880
On this one, lots of pastel
886
01:15:50,000 --> 01:15:56,480
and Degas is also known to have added a spirit to the pastel.
887
01:15:56,559 --> 01:15:59,559
It would be called an essence medium
888
01:15:59,640 --> 01:16:04,640
and that would enable him perhaps to manipulate the surface more.
889
01:16:04,720 --> 01:16:09,280
So, he's using pastel, taking it in new directions.
890
01:16:09,360 --> 01:16:14,200
It's supposed to be a medium which is very light and delicate and fresh.
891
01:16:14,280 --> 01:16:18,880
With some of them, he just builds up to such an extent
892
01:16:19,000 --> 01:16:21,559
that he's deadening the surface.
893
01:16:21,640 --> 01:16:24,400
So he's working over and over and over again,
894
01:16:24,480 --> 01:16:27,760
then he will try spraying it with fixative,
895
01:16:27,840 --> 01:16:31,360
or he'll spray it with water,
896
01:16:31,440 --> 01:16:36,760
and then almost create a wet surface
897
01:16:36,840 --> 01:16:40,840
so that he can work further into it and move the colour around.
898
01:16:41,640 --> 01:16:45,760
Then he'll also change the format. He'll add a bit at the bottom,
899
01:16:45,840 --> 01:16:48,280
he'll add another bit at the side.
900
01:16:48,360 --> 01:16:55,360
So there's the relationship between the original composition
901
01:16:55,440 --> 01:16:58,800
or the spatial positioning of the figure,
902
01:16:58,880 --> 01:17:03,880
adding a bit extra to change the composition as he goes along.
903
01:17:05,720 --> 01:17:09,280
Experiments and failures are, I think,
904
01:17:09,360 --> 01:17:14,680
really at the essence of what painters are trying to do at any time.
905
01:17:14,760 --> 01:17:18,080
We know what painters have been able to do in the past,
906
01:17:18,160 --> 01:17:19,880
but you always have to take that risk
907
01:17:20,000 --> 01:17:22,480
with the materials to go against the grain.
908
01:17:23,400 --> 01:17:26,400
Degas is not the only artist who commits himself
909
01:17:26,480 --> 01:17:33,280
to a kind of creative cycle of destruction, and reiteration,
910
01:17:33,360 --> 01:17:35,920
and rebuilding over and over again.
911
01:17:36,040 --> 01:17:38,880
It's not a circle, it's kind of like a spiral
912
01:17:39,000 --> 01:17:41,040
where you're building towards something,
913
01:17:41,120 --> 01:17:45,760
and revisiting, going in again and having a second run-up on something
914
01:17:45,840 --> 01:17:49,440
in order to get closer to what it was you were aiming for.
915
01:18:03,800 --> 01:18:06,880
"It is all very well to copy what one sees,
916
01:18:07,000 --> 01:18:13,240
but it is much better to draw what one does not see except in one's memory.
917
01:18:14,280 --> 01:18:19,559
It's a transformation during which the imagination collaborates with memory.
918
01:18:20,280 --> 01:18:26,400
You reproduce only what has struck you, that is, the necessary.
919
01:18:26,480 --> 01:18:29,200
In that way, your memories and your fantasy
920
01:18:29,280 --> 01:18:33,480
are liberated from the tyranny exercised by nature."
921
01:18:42,280 --> 01:18:45,280
Despite being so open to experimentation
922
01:18:45,360 --> 01:18:47,480
and new artistic thinking,
923
01:18:47,559 --> 01:18:52,080
Degas had strong conservative views which were often anti-Semitic.
924
01:18:52,720 --> 01:18:55,920
He was not shy in making his views known,
925
01:18:56,040 --> 01:18:58,240
particularly when it came to his opposition
926
01:18:58,320 --> 01:18:59,760
during the Dreyfus Affair.
927
01:18:59,840 --> 01:19:01,000
DREYFUS IS INNOCENT
928
01:19:01,080 --> 01:19:06,880
Spanning 12 years, this affair caused a major political and social divide
929
01:19:07,000 --> 01:19:10,320
when a Jewish French officer, Alfred Dreyfus,
930
01:19:10,400 --> 01:19:15,400
was accused of giving secrets to the German Empire and betraying France.
931
01:19:16,240 --> 01:19:18,440
The whole affair split the nation
932
01:19:18,520 --> 01:19:22,520
into those who were for Dreyfus and believed him to be innocent,
933
01:19:22,600 --> 01:19:26,120
called "Dreyfusards", and those who were against him
934
01:19:26,200 --> 01:19:28,360
and saw him as a Jewish traitor.
935
01:19:28,440 --> 01:19:29,440
THE TRAITOR
936
01:19:29,520 --> 01:19:31,040
Degas was against,
937
01:19:31,120 --> 01:19:34,320
and although Dreyfus was eventually cleared of his crimes
938
01:19:34,400 --> 01:19:36,280
after many years in prison
939
01:19:36,360 --> 01:19:40,920
for what was considered a major miscarriage of justice,
940
01:19:41,040 --> 01:19:44,559
Degas could not reconcile his resentment.
941
01:19:44,640 --> 01:19:49,920
He slowly withdrew from the world and cut ties with close Jewish friends
942
01:19:50,040 --> 01:19:53,240
such as the influential Hal?vy family.
943
01:19:55,080 --> 01:19:57,559
There was not just anti-Semitism,
944
01:19:57,640 --> 01:20:01,360
but a huge amount of anti-migrant,
945
01:20:01,440 --> 01:20:04,160
of nationalist sentiment,
946
01:20:04,240 --> 01:20:07,000
particularly in the last decade,
947
01:20:07,080 --> 01:20:13,480
a seriously problematic attitude towards incomers, towards migrants.
948
01:20:13,559 --> 01:20:18,680
But obviously, many of the Jewish community were long-standing residents,
949
01:20:18,760 --> 01:20:21,240
long-standing French people.
950
01:20:21,320 --> 01:20:24,480
His anti-Semitism, which began very early,
951
01:20:24,559 --> 01:20:28,200
it's not as if it suddenly appeared, but because of the Dreyfus Affair,
952
01:20:28,280 --> 01:20:33,280
it tipped him over the edge and it was a dramatic split,
953
01:20:33,360 --> 01:20:35,760
but characteristic of the age.
954
01:20:35,840 --> 01:20:38,840
There was a lot of anti-Semitism around at the time.
955
01:20:40,320 --> 01:20:44,920
You have very various political beliefs or religious beliefs.
956
01:20:45,040 --> 01:20:47,640
For example, Monet was a Republican,
957
01:20:47,720 --> 01:20:51,200
Pissarro was a Jewish anarchist, Courbet was a Communard,
958
01:20:51,280 --> 01:20:55,480
Durand-Ruel yet, who was a conservative Catholic, defended them all,
959
01:20:55,559 --> 01:21:00,840
and for all of them the bottom line was art before anything else.
960
01:21:00,920 --> 01:21:04,559
Perhaps "complex" is the only way to describe somebody
961
01:21:04,640 --> 01:21:06,640
who was certainly charismatic,
962
01:21:06,720 --> 01:21:10,559
but at the same time could alienate people by his gruffness,
963
01:21:10,640 --> 01:21:12,200
his harshness,
964
01:21:12,280 --> 01:21:17,280
somebody who, by his own admission, had a vicious tongue.
965
01:21:17,360 --> 01:21:20,040
Somebody who was also called misanthropic,
966
01:21:20,120 --> 01:21:22,120
who was called misogynistic,
967
01:21:22,200 --> 01:21:25,600
who certainly endured periods
968
01:21:25,680 --> 01:21:29,520
of what he called "dark thoughts", and melancholy.
969
01:21:34,840 --> 01:21:38,520
"His hearing became worse and he was now almost totally blind.
970
01:21:39,760 --> 01:21:42,760
His indifference to everything increased,
971
01:21:42,840 --> 01:21:45,000
and finally included even himself.
972
01:21:45,920 --> 01:21:48,760
But in spite of his forlorn appearance,
973
01:21:48,840 --> 01:21:52,200
there was always a certain distinction about him to the end.
974
01:21:52,280 --> 01:21:55,200
He had the air of having stepped out of a portrait, say,
975
01:21:55,280 --> 01:21:56,760
of the Italian school.
976
01:21:57,400 --> 01:22:01,680
He spent his last days wandering aimlessly about Paris,
977
01:22:01,760 --> 01:22:05,760
but usually his ramblings ended up at his former home, in Montmartre,
978
01:22:06,720 --> 01:22:10,559
now rapidly disappearing under the hands of the wreckers."
979
01:22:18,160 --> 01:22:21,880
"I am taking great care of my bladder
980
01:22:22,000 --> 01:22:25,000
with turpentine, Contreville water,
981
01:22:25,080 --> 01:22:29,000
and by cutting out coffee, spirits, etc.
982
01:22:30,040 --> 01:22:33,880
But my kidneys still hurt. My eyes are failing.
983
01:22:36,559 --> 01:22:40,200
I have had a little exhibition at Durand-Ruel
984
01:22:40,280 --> 01:22:45,080
of 26 imaginary landscapes which has been rather successful.
985
01:22:47,600 --> 01:22:51,040
I wish above all to remain alone,
986
01:22:51,120 --> 01:22:54,480
to work as quietly as possible with my poor eyes,
987
01:22:55,240 --> 01:23:00,080
and in order to obtain that quiet and that supreme good fortune,
988
01:23:00,160 --> 01:23:03,559
condemn myself also to die alone."
989
01:23:05,880 --> 01:23:10,400
We see that at the end of his life, Degas has become quite an old man.
990
01:23:10,480 --> 01:23:13,640
He's sick and tired,
991
01:23:13,720 --> 01:23:17,200
and yet he doesn't really want his niece to come at his home.
992
01:23:17,280 --> 01:23:20,680
We see that Cassatt writes to Durand-Ruel,
993
01:23:20,760 --> 01:23:22,280
"Yes, I don't understand Degas,
994
01:23:22,360 --> 01:23:25,440
who doesn't want to welcome his niece, who really wants to help him".
995
01:23:25,520 --> 01:23:28,920
But Degas is obsessed by the idea that they only want,
996
01:23:29,040 --> 01:23:34,240
maybe, his works of art, his money, his heritage,
997
01:23:34,320 --> 01:23:38,480
while Cassatt, who is quite close to Degas and to Durand-Ruel,
998
01:23:38,559 --> 01:23:41,320
"They want to help him,
999
01:23:41,400 --> 01:23:44,120
but he doesn't want to open his door".
1000
01:23:53,880 --> 01:23:55,840
Degas never married
1001
01:23:55,920 --> 01:23:57,160
and many of his acquaintances
1002
01:23:57,240 --> 01:23:59,840
could not maintain a relationship with him in the end
1003
01:23:59,920 --> 01:24:02,280
due to his difficult nature.
1004
01:24:02,360 --> 01:24:09,280
He died in Paris on 27th September 1917, aged 83.
1005
01:24:12,040 --> 01:24:14,240
In a letter to his gallery,
1006
01:24:15,440 --> 01:24:20,640
"You will realise how much I've produced, only at my death".
1007
01:24:27,240 --> 01:24:30,160
When Degas died and the Durand-Ruel family,
1008
01:24:30,240 --> 01:24:31,559
along with other dealers,
1009
01:24:31,640 --> 01:24:34,559
had to organise the sales after his death,
1010
01:24:34,640 --> 01:24:38,640
all the drawings they found in his studio were not signed,
1011
01:24:38,720 --> 01:24:41,080
as an artist only signs them when he sells them,
1012
01:24:41,160 --> 01:24:43,120
only when they get out of his studio.
1013
01:24:43,200 --> 01:24:47,559
So, Durand-Ruel takes photographs of all that is in his studio
1014
01:24:47,640 --> 01:24:52,559
and will have to later on put the signatures,
1015
01:24:52,640 --> 01:24:55,440
a stamped signature of Degas, on all Degas' work.
1016
01:24:55,520 --> 01:25:01,160
So here are the sales catalogues of the sales after Degas' death.
1017
01:25:01,240 --> 01:25:05,760
You have here the first catalogue, which is the first sale in 1918.
1018
01:25:07,000 --> 01:25:08,480
And you see that...
1019
01:25:10,520 --> 01:25:14,440
the experts for that sale are Mr Bernheim Jeune,
1020
01:25:15,200 --> 01:25:17,440
Durand-Ruel, and Vollard.
1021
01:25:18,000 --> 01:25:20,800
And the exhibition takes place at Georges Petit's Gallery.
1022
01:25:22,640 --> 01:25:26,120
Here you have the three various stamps they will use
1023
01:25:26,200 --> 01:25:31,680
in order to put Degas' signature on all these works of art which are not signed,
1024
01:25:31,760 --> 01:25:34,400
because they are in the artist's studio.
1025
01:25:34,480 --> 01:25:38,880
They'd authenticate the works of art and sign them with a stamp.
1026
01:25:44,440 --> 01:25:47,280
The works that Degas collected furiously,
1027
01:25:47,360 --> 01:25:51,520
mainly in the 1890s, were put up for sale.
1028
01:25:51,600 --> 01:25:55,240
He was a hugely enthusiastic collector himself.
1029
01:25:56,480 --> 01:26:01,320
But also a series of studio sales of his own work.
1030
01:26:01,400 --> 01:26:03,800
And they were hugely revealing.
1031
01:26:03,880 --> 01:26:09,640
He'd kept works in his studio from really his earliest career as an artist,
1032
01:26:09,720 --> 01:26:12,280
so the 1850s and early 1860s,
1033
01:26:12,360 --> 01:26:14,360
as well as thousands,
1034
01:26:14,440 --> 01:26:16,640
hundreds of drawings of nudes,
1035
01:26:16,720 --> 01:26:19,920
late charcoal drawings which were studio works,
1036
01:26:20,040 --> 01:26:22,520
again never intended for exhibition.
1037
01:26:25,160 --> 01:26:27,520
His legacy has been enormous, I think,
1038
01:26:28,640 --> 01:26:33,640
and it's partly due to his openness to new technology.
1039
01:26:33,720 --> 01:26:38,800
On the other hand, his engagement with that sensuality of colour,
1040
01:26:38,880 --> 01:26:43,400
you can see clear links to late 20th-century artists,
1041
01:26:43,480 --> 01:26:46,000
like Howard Hodgkin, for example,
1042
01:26:46,080 --> 01:26:49,080
for whom the experience of colour
1043
01:26:49,160 --> 01:26:55,240
is something that is capable of being eloquent and articulate
1044
01:26:55,320 --> 01:26:58,160
in describing our relationships to each other,
1045
01:26:58,240 --> 01:27:01,800
the quality of emotions we may experience in everyday life.
1046
01:27:03,000 --> 01:27:06,120
I think unquestionably he's a brilliant artist.
1047
01:27:06,200 --> 01:27:13,240
The extraordinary range, ingenuity, variety of work
1048
01:27:13,320 --> 01:27:16,320
that he achieved in a whole range of different media,
1049
01:27:16,400 --> 01:27:20,840
which was extremely adventurous and experimental.
1050
01:27:22,200 --> 01:27:29,320
I think it always has to be measured in the context of the time he worked.
1051
01:27:29,400 --> 01:27:33,680
It's really important not to ignore the past
1052
01:27:33,760 --> 01:27:37,120
and the way the past coloured his view,
1053
01:27:37,200 --> 01:27:41,200
and colours how we see him.
1054
01:27:43,720 --> 01:27:45,559
Degas' work looks effortless.
1055
01:27:45,640 --> 01:27:48,920
Those drawings, those pastels, look as if they were just dashed off,
1056
01:27:49,040 --> 01:27:52,200
but of course we know that he worked incredibly hard.
1057
01:27:52,280 --> 01:27:54,280
No wonder he was so grumpy in later life.
1058
01:27:54,360 --> 01:27:56,880
This kind of slightly obsessive quality
1059
01:27:57,000 --> 01:27:59,000
that I think made Degas
1060
01:27:59,080 --> 01:28:02,480
this most fascinating, and most perfectionist of artists.
1061
01:28:02,559 --> 01:28:06,559
Also, one of the sort of flawed geniuses of art as well.
1062
01:28:08,640 --> 01:28:13,640
I think Degas is a very great artist and of that coterie of impressionist,
1063
01:28:13,720 --> 01:28:16,880
post-impressionist painters, I think he is one of the very greatest.
1064
01:28:27,520 --> 01:28:30,120
"The gods are dead,
1065
01:28:30,200 --> 01:28:37,520
poetry alone is left to us, the last star in the night of chaos.
1066
01:28:37,600 --> 01:28:42,120
I have seen some very beautiful things through my anger,
1067
01:28:42,200 --> 01:28:44,800
and what consoles me a little,
1068
01:28:44,880 --> 01:28:50,320
is that through my anger I do not stop looking.
1069
01:28:51,200 --> 01:28:54,280
Art is not a matter of what you see,
1070
01:28:54,360 --> 01:28:58,559
but what you make other people see."
89733
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get subtitles in any language from opensubtitles.com, and translate them here.