[Warning: Contains art history and Jeffrey Epstein. Do not read in public if you’re squeamish.]
That’s a vulva.
I was in LA 15 years ago at the Norton Simon Museum during winter break. My bag was packed with a book from my Impressionism course.
I knew Degas was a weirdo, but that’s a vulva.
We didn’t cover this in class.
Climate Idiots Attack Statue With Paint
It’s a tale as old as… whenever demonic possession latched on to communism, probably.
Two hippies vandalized the display case containing the original Egdar Degas wax sculpture statue known as The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer or La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans.
I’m still reeling from the two hippies who — despite one having a degree in art restoration — damaged the Laocoon (the real one this time) in the Vatican last year. But since it’s hard to pronounce (lay-ah-koo-on), the attack went largely unnoticed.
I love the Laocoon.
I hate Degas’ sculptures.
When I finally saw a selection of his three dimensional art in person, I realized they weren’t contorted to show human achievement in dance. They were contorted to show their labia and vulva at the expense of true realism.
Unfortunately, the last time I viewed them was in probably 2008. I didn’t have a cell phone or a camera. Security already warned me once that day. I wasn’t going to push it and get closer.
The Model
Marie Geneviève van Goethem, born June 1865, was a Belgian student at the Paris Opera Ballet. She was the 14-year-old model used for this piece.
The Artist
Edgar Degas was born to a rich family in 1834 and died in 1917 without marrying.
We call him an Impressionist, but he called himself a realist.
I’d have to agree. French Impressionism par excellence is painted en plein air at speed to capture the unique lighting conditions of that moment in time. Degas made puke-yellow creepshow art of young ballet dancers.
Degas’ Sculpture
The Dancer, originally sculpted in wax and later cast in bronze for collectors, was first shown to the public in 1881. This was the only sculpture exhibited by Degas during his lifetime.
This 2018 video from The Met gives us some background on their bronze version of piece and its recent restoration.
Interestingly, the video doesn’t not show the bare sculpture, and she is given a tiny pair of shorts.
Costume conservator Glenn Peterson tells us about the piece:
“The sculpture was very controversial when it was originally displayed in 1881. It was too realistic.”
Contemporary critics called the statue’s facial features and posture ugly, yes, but while Frenchmen have no compunction calling an ugly woman ugly, it’s the “realistic” that sticks out.
Because the statue of a 14-year-old dancer includes labia.
How realistic is too…?
In a sense, it’s not so much that Degas carved genitals into so many of his models, it’s that they’re in the wrong place — so he focused on one detail (add genitals!) while sacrificing others (the location of said genitalia).
In clothing lingo, the statue’s rise is too high. The rise in your high rise and low rise jeans is the measurement between your crotch and the waistband.
Degas decided to sacrifice pelvic realism (and a more pleasing-to-French-standards face), giving his statue a birth canal as long as her forearm, all to allow room to carve out the genitalia.
Bonfire of the Proclivities
After the exhibition, Degas removed the piece from public view, where it stayed out of sight until long after his death in 1917 when many of his possessions passed to his family.
The original wax sculpture was eventually purchased by Paul Mellon in 1956 and gifted to the National Gallery of Art in 1985.
Paul Mellon died in 1999, but not before what appears to have been at least one trip on Epstein’s Lolita Express.
Germain Greer wrote about the statue’s journey in 2009:
Degas's brother René is said to have destroyed 70 pornographic sketches that were found at the time of the artist's death. One escaped [La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans] and can be seen in this exhibition.
There’s a place in 19th century French art for pornography and eroticism, but when it’s a depiction of a real 14-year-old girl?
The contemporary French Realism painter Gustave Courbet’s 1866 The Origin of the World / L'Origine du monde was commissioned to be part of Khalil Chérif Pasha‘s personal collection of erotic art, and it’s still shocking — and it shows much less vulva from this adult model compared to Degas in his sculptures of very young girls.
So, I applaud the poor impulse control of these climate idiots.
They’re no different from the guys on Twitter posting self-own videos of themselves harassing retail employees over gay books and swim trunks.