De Kooning, Degas, Donatello (to Bellini): Ambitious Loan Shows that Bucked the Permanent-Collection Trend---Part III

Entrance to Boston Museum of Fine Arts' current hit show

[Part I is here; Part II is here.]

Degas and the Nude at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (to Feb. 5) is one of the most perfectly realized art-museum explorations of a complex subject that I've ever encountered. The initiator of this ambitious undertaking---curator George T.M. Shackelford---gets extra points for focusing on a theme that's an obvious choice for a major scholarly crowd-pleaser but that, unaccountably, no one (as far as George could determine) had tackled till now.

This show is thoroughly multimedia, not only in its handheld audio and video enhancements, but, more importantly, in the old-fashioned sense---extensive representation of all the media in which the artist worked: drawings, monotypes, sculpture (including a large array of bronzes cast from his wax models of dancers), paintings and, of course, the ravishing pastels for which he is perhaps most celebrated.

Much richer than a conventional chronological retrospective, "Degas" makes telling comparisons within the artist's own oeuvre, including, perhaps for the first time, juxtapositions of monotypes with their corresponding pastels.

Here is one of the pastels for which the corresponding monotype is displayed:


"Nude Combing Her Hair," c. 1877-80, pastel over monotype in black ink on paper, private collection, Chicago, Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The show goes beyond typical retrospectives with its sampling of astutely selected works by artists who influenced Degas---Ingres, Delacroix, Goya, Puvis de Chavannes---and by later admirers whom he influenced---Bonnard, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse:


Matisse, "Carmelina," 1903, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© 2011 Succession H. Matisse, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In this context, I can now more fully appreciate why Shackelford felt irresistibly tempted to deaccession eight works from the BMFA's collection (including three with significant exhibition histories) to purchase this one---a prominently installed non-Degas, which is one of the exhibition's showstoppers:


Gustave Caillebotte, "Man at His Bath," 1884, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

It's a luminous tour de force, not as much for the candid but (to me) disappointing depiction of male flesh as for the alluring sheen of the tub and the luxuriant, lovingly detailed renderings of crumpled fabrics and well-worn boots (the latter on the left, below the chair). None of this is adequately conveyed in the above photo. The painting, in apparently pristine condition, is (like everything else in the show) perfectly lit, so its glistening brushstrokes appear still wet.

The Caillebotte is also a reminder that the only male nudes we've seen from Degas came as something of a surprise, at the very beginning of the show. His early academic studies of male nudes from live models or other artists' works (including a study of Michelangelo's "Bound Slave") are classically sensual, in sharp contrast to the mature Degas' awkwardly posed females, caught unawares from behind (as is Caillebotte's spread-eagled "Man").

We could make some Freudian guesses here about Degas' famously ambiguous sexuality, but Boston's exhibition (unlike two other Degas shows I've seen, curated by Richard Kendall, who discusses Degas' possible impotence and/or celibacy) doesn't really go there.

The importance to the show of Caillebotte (who bequeathed his own collection of his friend's nudes-in-pastel to the French State---its first acquisitions of Degas) is underscored by the curators' suggestion that the "unabashed realism" of works like "Man at His Bath" may have helped inspire Degas to begin a monumental (but unfinished) painting of a similar subject (toweling off after a bath), installed beside the Caillebotte:


"Nude Woman Drying Herself," 1884-92, Brooklyn Museum, Courtesy Brooklyn Museum and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In their reviews of Boston's show, some critics have come across as direct descendants of the scandalized scribes from Degas' own day---describing his nudes as cruel (Karen Rosenberg, NY Times), or misogynistic (Peter Schjeldahl, New Yorker). His female nudes are often awkward, caught in private, ungainly movements. In other words, they're real women, not rarefied beauties flattered in fetching poses. Degas' best works are astonishing for their unsparingly candid, very modern realism. His gaze was intensely voyeuristic, but not misogynistic.

The critic who best appreciated these nuances was Sebastian Smee of the Boston Globe. He stated:

If you come to the show with an image of Degas as the painter of pretty ballerinas and horse track scenes, be prepared to find something tougher. If, on the other hand, you come with your defenses up---convinced that Degas, along with being an anti-Semite, was also a misogynist---prepare to have these defenses weakened.

The artist's voyeurism is laid bare in his early brothel monotypes, whose frankness still shocks. This is one of the tamer examples:


"The Serious Client," 1876-77, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Photo © National Gallery of Canada, Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Also featured in the Clark Art Institute's 2010 "Picasso Looks at Degas" exhibition (co-curated by Kendall), these tawdry morsels weren't intended for public consumption and were "largely unknown until after [Degas'] death," according to Boston's wall text for "The Body Exploited."

But Degas' oeuvre is not only about overturning conventional notions of female beauty. By the time we get to the 1880s, we're swooning in aesthetic ecstasy amidst the jewel-like, dazzlingly dappled, highly finished pastels of bathers that "constitute one of his highest achievements as an artist," as the curators tell us:


"La Toilette," 1884-86, private collection, Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston


"The Tub," 1886, Musée d'Orsay
© Photo Musée d'Orsay/rmn, Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

All credit goes to the curators, especially George Shackelford, now moving on to the senior deputy directorship of the Kimbell Art Museum from his BMFA posts as chair of European art and curator of modern art. (As part of the Fort Worth museum's musical chairs, Malcolm Warner, after 10 years at the Kimbell as senior curator, deputy director and acting director, has also moved on, effective this week, to the executive directorship of the Laguna Art Museum.)

Shackelford conceived "Degas" more than three years ago, enlisting the ideal co-conspirator (and co-curator)---Xavier Rey, curator of paintings, Musée d'Orsay. The Paris museum (to which the show will travel, Mar. 12-July 1) is the largest single lender, with more than 60 of the 160 works culled from 50 international sources.

As one who has long argued that curators should get a "byline" in an exhibition's wall text, I was pleasantly surprised by the well-earned acknowledgement of Shackelford's authorship in the introductory panel. May he extend the same courtesy to curators at the Kimbell, and long live this laudable practice at the BMFA!


Curatorial Star Turn: George Shackelford's signed introductory wall text (with photograph) for "Degas and the Nude"

For the exhibition's online slideshow, go here. For its catalogue, go here.

And now, art-lings, a personal note: Shackelford's swansong at the BMFA is, as it happens, CultureGrrl's swansong too. My three-week Last-Gasp Fund Drive has concluded. As promised, I'll be announcing here on Monday the results of my fundraising appeal and my future plans.