Degas Bronze Controversy

Judd Tully, writing for ArtInfo has a good article on the group of 74 bronzes made from the recently discovered plaster casts made from the original wax sculptures by  Deagas himself.n  Tully writes an excellent column including some good background on Degas, noting that the artist himself never made bronzes during his lifetime, only working with the wax sculptures.  The debate of course is how authentic these old yet new bronzes should be considered by the art establishment.

An interesting article to read, and an interesting situation to contemplate and ponder.

Tully writes

But like the Egyptian treasure, the Degas finds could be said to carry a sort of curse. Instead of being hailed "as the greatest art discovery in the past 25 years," as Maibaum believes they should be, the plasters, the bronzes made from them, and he himself have been attacked or shunned by the larger art world. "That’s a lot of bronze," one anonymous critic has grumbled. "Who needs them?"

Degas bronzes, of course, have been controversial since they first appeared, five years after the artist’s death. Degas never produced any bronzes during his lifetime, sculpting instead in beeswax and plastiline clay. Of those sculptures, he allowed only one, La petite danseuse de quatorze ans, to be shown, in the sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881. The little dancer, made of yellow wax and clothed in a ballet costume, was mostly savaged by critics.

After the artist’s death, in 1917, about 150 of his wax and clay sculptures were found in his studio, in very poor condition. Through his dealers, Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard, Degas’s heirs contracted with Adrien-A. Hébrard, owner of the prestigious Hébrard foundry in Paris, to make posthumous casts of the 74 that were in the best shape. Alberto Palazzolo, Hébrard’s master founder, was entrusted with making molds from these fragile originals, which he then used to produce modèles in bronze from which casts could be produced. The plan was to create 22 casts of each figure: 20 for sale and one each for the heirs and the foundry

To read the full article, click HERE.