 |
Edgar Degas,
Ballet Scene, c. 1907, pastel on cardboard, National Gallery of
Art, Washington, Chester Dale Collection 1963.10.16 |
|
|
|
|
In
the late 1890s, Degas’ work became more abstract. He used pastel more
frequently, choosing intense, sometimes strident color and focusing more
on the formal qualities of color, line, and shape. In Ballet Scene,
he vigorously
applied pastels—bright blues, greens, oranges, and pinks—to
create an assemblage of dancers’ limbs flowing into one another across
the friezelike composition. One twentieth-century scholar observed: "The
stage curtain is so full of bravura, so essentially abstract, that it could
be an abstract expressionist painting."
|
|
