Edgar Degas – Two Women (1876-1877)

Most of the canonical oil painters from the mid-19th century onward can hardly be said to have produced entirely chaste work.

But what I find interesting is the extent to which sexuality is implicit in the quote-unquote masterpieces and explicit in their sketches, BTS experiments.

Seeing this sketch absolutely gives me a better grip on Degas’ work. (The feeling that I’ve always had that his bathers are prostitutes, washing up between clients–now seems far less preposterous and the so evocative rendering of his dancers suggests a fixation on sexuality associated with bodies and/or nudity.)

Gustav Klmit, Egon Schiele and Picasso all made v. similar sketches, actually. And the thought that suggests to me is that Schiele was probably the most honest about what he was up to–since there’s less discrepancy between what he exhibited publicly and what he mediated upon privately. Klimt and Degas were more interested in attempt to present sexuality organically within a proscribed context–one facet in a many faceted presentation. (And the Picasso drawing in the ambiguity of the depiction of the person performing oral sex on the woman preserves an undifferentiated, ambiguously gendered person that can serve as both signifier of a woman or a place holder for a man–which seems to be entirely in keeping with Picasso’s legendary misogyny.)