Degas and the Nude

Saw the Degas exhibit at the MFA a couple times and know what is awesome there? This piece:

After the Bath, Woman with a Towel

The show closed on February 5^th, but happily, this piece is owned by the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard so anybody in the Boston area can go and visit it there.

The drawing was done with pastel on blue-gray wove paper and is 27 7/8 x 22 9/16 inches.

There is so much color, it is hard to even get the full sense of it from just seeing the image, you really need to go and visit it.  Completed somewhere between 1893 and 1897, I was unprepared to see such vibrant colors used so long ago.  It really does feel like long ago, so much in art has happened since then, but really, it should be no surprise.  Wikipedia says that the first time the French word “pastel” was used was in 1662. It is so hard to get a true feeling of time over the course of history.  Anyway, bright color just seem like such a contemporary idea, what a refreshing thing to be wrong about.

I was also impressed by all of the vertical and horizontal lines going on in Degas’ drawings throughout his work.  So much structure, it aligns with the industrialization that was going on at the time I suppose, but it speaks to pixels now.    


Other pieces I loved:

After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Chest
Made around 1890
Pastel on tracing Paper
The Courtland Gallery, London

Woman at her Bath
Made around 1895
Oil on canvas
28 x 35 inches

Woman Seated on a Bathtub, Sponging her Neck
Made around 1895
Oil on paper
Musee d'Orsay, Paris

The show also had many pieces by other artists who served as both inspirations and peers to Degas.  One of the pieces that I just have not got enough of yet is a painting by Picasso.

Nude on a Red Background
Oil on canvas
Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris

Art in Life via Instagram

Seeing art in everyday life is shared and encouraged via the instagram app for iphone.  This is sort of a commercial for them and I'm sort of fine with that.  It is free app that makes quick and easy artmaking accessible for those with the tools (an iphone or ipad).  There are boundaries and freedoms within the mechanics, which is usually a good equation, and seems to be working out pretty well for them and us.

The user is forced to use a square frame, immediately requiring more of a mental focus of the them by taking the typical rectangular cropping device out of play.  Because of this, composition quickly becomes key before you even get into the color adjustments as one cannot thoughtlessly click (or tap) away.

There are 17 filters to choose from to send the photo through if you don't want to keep the original color balance.  There is a black and white filter along with variations that lean towards the respective primaries and also some that will give a vintage look to the shot.

Another app that has come out to help get creative with your photos is Ditpic, which unlike Instagram is not free but pretty cheap, I think it is 2 or 3 dollars.  Using Ditpic the user can photo collage away with templates that have been set up.  There is also the option of altering these templates by dragging the lines between the photos all over the place to change the shape of each piece of the puzzle.

It is so easy to get carried away documenting every second of life, and I'm pretty much doing that all the time.  These apps slow me down just enough to really think about what is happening, and what I want to happen, visually.  

What am I trying to emphasize?  Just above, the orange, and below the glass.  Within those focal points, I'm playing with the contrast between these things and what is hanging out in the rest of the frame.  I can make these decisions very quickly, choose the appropriate filter to bring out the warms, cools and contrasts I'm looking for and share away.

I truly believe that art is anywhere you want it to be and that anybody can make it if they want to.  This app helps us unselfconsciously share the various visual stimuli we get throughout our day to inspire ourselves and our friends.

By the way, I got my Dana Schutz If the Face Had Wheels book in the mail and it has pretty good forward, a great interview, photos of paintings that were not in the show I saw (which rocked) but the photo of painting Licking A Brick was not included!! wth?!  That is the ONE painting that I was anxious to get to it's page as I was flipping through.  Why is there no documentation of this piece online OR in this book??