The artist that I chose for this poetry unit was Degas and the painting that I chose is called "Ballet" but is also known as the "Star". It's made from pastel on canvas.
The history of Degas is very interesting. Its defenitly not one of those simple lives that we teens are living through right now. He was born July 19th in Paris. His father was a banker and his mother died when he was only 13 years old. Over time he changed his focus on painting and what exactly he wanted to draw. He went from painting horses and riders, theaters, plays, girls, women in a toilette/ironing, women bathing / women combing their hair to making sculptures of young schoolgirls. He also abandoned paints for pastels. Throughout the last decades of his life, he began to have eye problems. How can you be a painter without the proper use of eyes? This was defenitly a big loss to Degas because he spent alot of time painting in his life and now the use of that was pretty much gone.
The painting "Star" is one very deep painting filled with depth of mystery. The painting was made of pastel versus it being used by oil (which is what Degas usually used). This shows the hardness versus smoothness in the painting. The painting itself is very dim instead of being a very bright, filled with light kinda painting. Its interesting and I think very important how the colors used are very bright but the picture in general does seem very dark. In the picture itself, there's a ballerina dancing, dancers, in the background behind / inside of a cave like shelter, and a man wearing a black suit. His head isn't showing which I believe gives this entire picture meaning. The thing that I wondered when I first saw this painting was why did Degas put the man there behind the cave like shelter? Who does that person represent? Seven years before Degas made this painting, he sent a letter saying this :
"I have just had, and still have, some trouble with my eyes. This happened on the riverbank at Chatou, while I was painting a watercolor in bright sunlight, and for three weeks I was unable to read or work or go out, and was terrified that I wouldn’t recover”
I think this is what the man in the background represent. I think that the man represents the blindness which was coming to him. And the ballerina is him expressing himselves throughout painting. But then the blindness is just behind him and he's totally unconcious of it coming to him.
After looking and interperating this piece, I've learned that Degas was a really mysterious painter and he took very small things that have the biggest interperation / meaning behind it. I think that is very interesting and this makes me wanna look at all his other paintings and such and observe those and connect them all out.
