Degas' Dancers

A statement attributed to Degas: "Personally, I don't like cabs. You don't see anyone. That's why I love to ride on the omnibus-you can look at people. We were created to look at one another, weren't we?"

This makes sense to me, especially considering Degas' paintings on the ballerinas. Degas knew that one of the main things we do as people is look at other people. After all, we grew up looking at each other, not just squares and rectangles an triangles and bland patches of color. We didn't grow up looking just at buildings and flowers and fruit. We grew up looking at our family, our friends, and depending on who you are and what you do, your enemies.

The modern obsession, or as some might indicate a re-obsession, of reality TV only goes to solidify the idea that we like to look at people. I'll even confess that I have a passion for the Big Brother series. Game show aspect aside, it's a giant sociological project about relationships under a variety of situations. It's a testimony to the levels to which some will stoop, and how to maintain dignity in a sinking ship. For all of us who watch Big Brother, Survivor, Fear Factor, Amazing Race, and the list goes on (I'm only familiar with what's on American TV, though I know there are Big Brother's in other countries, and other varied Reality TV shows.), we watch for the people.

One of the principle draws of these shows is that we are watching ourselves. Normal (for the most part) people who place themselves in a situation with the hopes not only surmounting the obstacles but coming out on top. This is a small allegory for life; we live, overcome obstacles such as school, work, aging, disease, and death, and in the end we hope not only to come out on top but to bring our tribe or team to victory with us, our family or friends. We fascinate ourselves.

Isn't it obvious then to so many of us that the majority of the 'classic' great pieces of artwork have people? This is because we identify with who we are looking at. Degas' dancers, for instance, were not impossibly perfect specimens of the human body. They were not surgically enhanced women contorted into odd positions to entice the eyes of the 18-24 male crowd. These were young girls learning to dance. They were daughters, girlfriends, best friends, and for the women, yourselves. They were the dream that could very well be, in that studio working on their pirouette for the 50th time that afternoon trying to get it right so that someone in the audience would look up on that stage and say, 'wow, how wonderful that girl dances'.

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