Degas's Dance Class depicts movement through the use of the brush and the "cut" composition of painting, creating a realistic snapshot of dancers in motion. During the Impressionist movement, the goal of the Impressionists was to create the impression of a single moment, not captured in time but passing through time. There are ways to capture moments to make characters seem frozen in time, but that is not Degas' intention. He presents his subjects as if they were still moving, and the viewer simply walked in and glimpsed the scene. As Degas looked for new ways to show the human form in motion, he discovered that ballerinas made superb models to paint. His lively brushwork and clear, bright colors were typical of the Impressionist movement. Degas applied the oil paint to the canvas in thin but visible brushstrokes, creating soft, rounded edges to give the painting an overall blur. When the viewer stands at a reasonable distance, their eyes see a mixture of individual color marks that blend together optically. “This method created more vibrant colors than colors mixed like physical paint on a palette” (Gersh-Nesic). Degas also mixes colors next to each other to avoid any harsh lines. The general vagueness created by Degas lies in the way he depicts movement in many of his paintings. Another method Degas used to create movement was to crop his subjects at the edges to give the effect of a room filled with movement. A “cut” composition is “where the subject is cut at the level of the frame” (Edgar Degas). The cut composition helps create movement throughout the work by illustrating that the painting is neither posed nor centered. Degas opposed "normal artistic logic [stating] that the subject must be at the center of a painting...Degas's true gift is his ability to capture what might have been frozen, awkward scenes of movement and to make them bring to life” (Muscato). On all sides of the picture, Degas cleverly chose to cut the scene, making each ballerina look as if Degas had taken a photo of the dancers and paused them mid-movement. This gives the audience a sense of universal movement throughout the piece. By creating a blur of movement with Degas's brushwork and cropping the figures at the edges of the painting, The Dance Class clearly depicts the overall movement throughout the piece. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay Using his unique perspective and angle techniques, Degas creates a controversial painting of ballerinas in unsightly positions that appears at human eye as a snapshot of a glimpse into a secret rehearsal room. Degas was heavily influenced by his early years of photography and applied it to many of his paintings. Many Impressionists were inspired by photography, because “photography managed to help generate another feeling about art: it should try to capture a single moment” (Muscato). Unlike ancient art which captured fixed or posed scenes, “the impressionists did not want to capture a fixed moment in time, they wanted to create the impression of a moment crossing time” (Muscato). Although Degas was influenced by the Old Masters of art, Degas deliberately avoided the academic art of borrowing poses from classical statues or paintings by Old Masters. Instead, hepreferred to capture unexpected moments from unique perspectives, as he does in The Dance Class. In this painting, the audience is at eye level with the dancing master, Jules Perrot, which gives him a feeling of authority and goes unnoticed by the ballerinas. The authenticity and realism of the scene gives the impression that the artist was invited to take a quiet look at his side in this room, without being noticed by the people there. The viewer usually hides in the shadows and observes the fluid movements of young ballet dancers "through the keyhole." “Degas depicted the dancers from unusual angles and points of view, often giving glimpses of the stage or behind the scenes in a style that was quite radical for the time” (Edgar Degas). This specific scene is not something that everyone could see at this time. The dancers would automatically be classified between elegant and unsightly, not earning the fame they received due to the strange positions they rest in and the unsightly things they do. The perspective used by Degas creates the idea that the rehearsal room is much larger than it is, showing figures cut off from the sides of the painting due to the perspective of seeing through someone's eyes else. Through the use of unique perspectives and angles, Degas draws his audience into this rehearsal room of the Paris Opera and from this privileged position we can contemplate all the more The Dance Class and the lack of elegance of the dancers. Degas creates a graceful illusion using light, pastel colors, soft edges, and a blurred application of paint to the dancer's tutus. At first glance, the audience automatically expresses how beautiful The Dance Class looks. They see the fluffy tulle skirts the dancers wear and call them graceful. When the public looks closer, they see all the outrage that is happening. "It is interesting to note that although we assume from the outset that the ballerinas are beautiful and graceful, many, if not all of them, except the one performing, are actually rendered in an unsightly manner" (Zucker). The dancers in the painting are anything but graceful. “Most of them have their faces masked or turn their backs to us, one of them has her fingers in her mouth, while the dancer in the foreground even seems to be pulling up her tutu” (Le Cours de danse d'Edgar Degas). As the viewer's eyes move across the painting to the right corner, the viewer sees girls sitting in unsightly positions, playing with their necklaces and leaning against the wall, clearly expressing the degree of disinterest they contain in this moment. Degas chose to illustrate the ballerinas in this way to show that humans are humans. Degas “examines these citizens in their most ordinary state – tired, often disinterested and ultimately inelegant”, a state of being that every human being experiences (The Dance Class by Edgar Degas). It seems that when they are not on stage they are very clumsy, but when they are they transform into beautiful and elegant dancers. “The artist explores the form of the ballerina in her brief moments of respite, when her elegance is supplanted by the unsightly realism of human gesture” (Le Cours de danse d'Edgar Degas). Degas did not want to paint only the grace and beauty of dance, but preferred to paint what happens behind the scenes. He was fascinated by the idea of ​​creating a graceful illusion in painting, creating it in such a way that the viewer looks closer to see the hard work and less graceful gestures that take place before the elegant piece is completed and executed. Unlike TheDance of Degas The class, the dancer on stage and the dancers behind the scenes of The Star all look very graceful and elegant, as well. Both paintings are viewed from unique angles, illustrating the overall movement through the pieces. The Star, one of Degas's famous paintings, was created four years after Le cours de danse, when Degas became preoccupied with a new artistic method. He used pastel to create the soft, fluffy texture of the dancers' skirts and to create movement throughout the painting. There are many aspects that make this painting so famous and unique, such as the perspective from above the stage, which offers us "an even more complete picture of the life of a dancer by being able to also witness what is happening in the behind the scenes” (L’Etoile). Degas took a rather different approach to The Star than he did to The Dance Class. “For ten years, Degas focused on painting dancers and ballerinas in rehearsal and at rest,” but in L'Étoile, Degas depicts the grace of a ballerina as she performs her “pas sol,” or solo of dance, towards the orchestra pit (L'Étoile). “The Star experiences her happiness and it flows from the painting to create in us that same feeling of pure joy when we look at the painting,” giving the audience a different feeling than The Dance Class (The Star). When audiences watch The Dance Class, they awaken to the reality of the dancers, realizing that they, like everyone else, carry the inevitable human trait of ugliness. Another fascinating aspect of The Star is the unique angle from which the piece is painted. Degas loved experimenting with different perspectives and angles, and he shows this throughout his works. The Star's perspective is from an angle above the stage, giving the audience a full view of the dancer and those waiting inside the wings. It gives the viewer an idea of ​​what goes on behind the scenes of dance, but not to the same extent as The Dance Class. The Star hides the hard work, disinterest and ugliness of ballerinas, unlike The Dance Class which shows the reality of the typical dancer's life. Although both pieces beautifully represent unique perspectives and overall movement, The Dance Class illustrates impressionist ideals in a finer way through the realism of the piece. Compared to Renoir's The Dancer, Degas uses innovative methods to depict the dancers, for example by painting their bodies in movement. using particular angles to capture them in delicate situations, while Renoir painted the formal, common portrait. Pierre Auguste-Renoir was a French impressionist painter who "is best known for his paintings of modernity and lively Parisian leisure" (Pierre-Auguste Renoir). Along with the other Impressionists, Renoir is well known for his use of bright colors, light and shadow in his paintings. Besides his common paintings of Parisian life, he also painted formal portraits, including The Dancer. In this oil painting, Renoir uses a variety of brushstrokes, "ranging from the delicate brushstrokes that define the dancer's face to the loose and almost careless application of paint on the background of the painting" (The Dancer) . The range from defined to loose brushstrokes is a style that is consistent across all Impressionist paintings, making it a key characteristic of the art of the period. “Unlike Degas, whose interest lay in the depiction of dancers at rest, captured in moments of inattention and unconsciousness, Renoir chose to paint a more formal portrait” (The Dancer). Develop + Transition. Unique perspectives and angles were evident in Degas's pieces, which Renoir seemed to lack. " So much.