Motor City Journal: 1) Puzzlings—Degas
The problem with the poorly made jigsaw puzzle, “Lighthouses of the Great Lakes,” was the large number of
almost perfect piecings. While the lake outlines with colorfully depicted brick, fieldstone, or clapboard beacons resolved quickly (no chance of siting the Whitefish Bay house on the Ashtabula shore), the tan lands of the physical map, with faint varicose veins for rivers, were a challenge. The straight-edged border—in most puzzles the easy part—was so arbitrary in its piecings, it was finally not worth the trouble to complete.
The puzzle,
L’etoile (The Star), purchased after negotiating the crowded maze through the DIA’s sumptuous “Degas and the Dance” exhibit to the inevitable gift shop, posed other challenges. The ballerina, basking in the warm glow of theatrical lighting, launched forward balancing on one leg, takes perhaps a third the canvas but is off-center, lower right. Above her head pastel-hued dresses suggest other dancers emerging from nooks of a grotto set. Just left of them vertical black swatches cohere in the somber figure of a privileged subscriber, perhaps Degas himself. Balancing the sweeping, monotone-gray stage floor is a rich, layered patina of blue-green ultramarine etched with copper and bronze—day just breaking, upper right.
You have to admire this artist’s bold use of “unnatural” color, degrees of representation/impression to indicate point of view, skewed, barely framed groupings, and “modern” empty swaths of canvas. After three days I leave a half-completed puzzle—much of the grotto and the vast, pervasively gray if sometimes scraped or washed set floor. Leave to other artists more various obsessions: Degas made the artificial, highly aesthetic though partly sordid theatrical world his study and we’re still peering at these paintings.
posted by Paul at 11:01 AM
