Washington DC Adult Entertainment: Picasso Looks at Degas, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts
Written on August 31, 2010 – 9:49 pm | by larrylibido
From Degas, Picasso learnt the expressive power of awkwardness, but it did not come naturally. Degas’ models twist and turn away from the eye of the painter, who observes them aslant or from above. In his unfinished and monochrome but still startling canvas “Nude Woman Drying Herself”, the subject performs strenuous ablutions – you can practically feel the friction of towel on skin as she yanks it across her buttocks. She stands, facing away, in a column of paleness, the room’s dark corners pressing in to join the shadows at her back. Nearby hangs Picasso’s “Turning Nude, from the Back”, which depicts in charcoal on paper a faceless, hairless hunk of marble standing in contrapposto against a neutral backdrop. Where Degas’ woman is caught in candid contortions, Picasso’s is classical, timeless and impassive.
It’s only when Picasso reached old age that he finally surrendered to Degas’ lessons in deliberate imbalance. He owned a series of Degas monotypes in which heavy nudes fling themselves around a brothel, and …