The Dance Class by Degas describes movement through the use of brushwork and the "cut" composition of the painting, creating a Realistic snapshot of dancers in motion. During the Impressionist movement, the Impressionists' goal was to create the impression of a single moment, not captured in time but passing through time. There are ways to capture moments so that the figures appear frozen in time, but this is not Degas' intention. He presents his subjects as if they were still in motion and the viewer simply walked in and glimpsed the scene. As Degas searched for new ways to show the human form in movement, he discovered that ballerinas made beautiful models to paint. His lively brushwork and clear, bright colors were typical of the Impressionist movement. Degas applied oil paint to the canvas with thin but visible brushstrokes, creating soft, rounded edges to give the painting an overall blur. When the viewer is at a reasonable distance, his eyes see a mix of individual color marks that blend together optically. “This method created more vibrant colors than colors mixed like physical paint on a palette” (Gersh-Nesic). Degas also mixes colors next to each other to avoid harsh lines. The general blur Degas creates is how he depicts movement in many of his paintings. Another method Degas used to create movement was to crop subjects at the edges to give the effect of a room full of movement. A “cut” composition is “where the subject is cut out of the frame” (Edgar Degas). The cropped composition helps create movement throughout the piece by illustrating that the painting is not posed and centered. Degas bucked “normal artistic logic [stating] that the subject should be at the center of a painting… Degas's true gift is his ability to capture what might have been frozen, awkward scenes of movement and make them feel alive” (Muscato). On all sides of the painting, Degas cleverly chose to cut across the scene, making each dancer appear as if Degas had taken a snapshot of the dancers and stopped them mid-movement. This gives the audience a sense of universal movement throughout the piece. By creating a motion blur with Degas' brushwork and cropping the figures around the edges of the painting, The Dance Class clearly portrays the overall movement throughout the piece. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Through his techniques of perspective and unique angles, Degas creates a controversial painting of ballerinas in awkward positions that appears to the human eye like a snapshot of a glimpse into a secret rehearsal room. Degas was greatly influenced by his early years of photography and applied it to many of his paintings. Many impressionists were inspired by photography, since “photography managed to help generate another feeling towards art: it should try to capture a single moment” (Muscato). Unlike previous art that captured still or posed scenes, "the Impressionists did not want to capture a fixed moment in time, they wanted to create the impression of a moment passing in time" (Muscato). Although Degas was influenced by the old masters of art, Degas deliberately avoided the academic art of borrowing poses from classical statues or paintings by old masters. Instead, he preferred to capture moments of carelessness from unique perspectives, as he does in The Dance Class. In this painting, the audience is at eye level with ballet master JulesPerrot, giving the spectators a sense of authority and going unnoticed by the dancers. The authenticity and realism of the scene create the impression that the artist has been invited to peer quietly into this room next to him, without anyone inside noticing him. The spectator generally hides in the shadows, observing the fluid movements of the young dancers “from the keyhole”. “Degas depicted dancers from unusual angles and viewpoints, often painting glimpses from both the stage and backstage in a style quite radical for the times” (Edgar Degas). This specific scene is not something everyone would be able to see in this era. Dancers would automatically be classified from graceful to graceless, without earning the fame they received due to the strange positions they rest in and the graceless things they do. The perspective used by Degas creates the idea that the rehearsal room is much larger than it is, showing figures cut off on the sides of the painting due to the perspective of seeing through someone else's eyes. Through the use of unique perspectives and angles, Degas draws his audience into this rehearsal room of the Paris Opéra and in this privileged position we can contemplate The Dance Class and the lack of elegance in the dancers even more. Degas creates a graceful illusion using light, pastel colors, soft edges, and a blurry application of paint on the ballerina's tutu. At first glance, the audience automatically expresses how beautiful The Dance Class is. They see the soft tulle skirts that the dancers are wearing and classify them as cute. When the audience looks closer, they see all the atrocity that occurs. “It is interesting that although ballerinas are assumed to be beautiful and graceful, many, if not all, dancers, with the exception of the one performing, are actually rendered in an awkward manner” (Zucker ). The dancers in the painting are anything but graceful. “Most have their faces hidden or their backs to us, one has her fingers in her mouth, while the dancer in the foreground even seems to lift her tutu” (The Dance Lesson by Edgar Degas). As the viewer's eyes move across the painting to the right corner, the viewer sees the girls sitting in awkward positions, fiddling with their necklaces and leaning against the wall, clearly conveying the amount of disinterest they contain in this moment. Degas chose to illustrate the ballerinas in this way to represent that humans are human. Degas “examines these citizens in their most ordinary state: tired, often disinterested, and ultimately inelegant,” a state of being that every human being experiences (The Dance Class by Edgar Degas). It seems that when they are not on stage they are very clumsy, but when they are they transform into beautiful and elegant dancers. “The artist explores the form of the ballerina in her brief moments of respite, when her elegance is supplanted by the awkward realism of the human gesture” (The Dance Lesson of Edgar Degas). Degas did not want to paint only the grace and beauty of dance, but preferred to paint what happens behind the scenes. He was fascinated by the idea of ​​creating a graceful illusion in the painting, creating it so that the viewer would look closer to see the hard work and less graceful gestures that occur before the elegant piece is complete and executed. Unlike Degas's The Dance The Class, the dancer on stage and the dancers behind the scenes in The Star all have a very graceful and elegant appearance. Both paintings are viewed from unique angles, depicting the overall movement throughout the pieces. The Star, one of Degas' famous paintings, was created four years after The Dance Lesson, when Degas became interested in a new artistic method.He used pastel to create the soft, soft texture of the ballerina's skirts and to create movement throughout the painting. Many aspects make this painting so famous and unique, such as the perspective from above the stage, which guarantees us "an even more complete picture of the life of a dancer while also being able to witness what happens behind the scenes" (La Stella). Degas took a rather different approach with The Star than with The Dance Class. “For ten years Degas concentrated on painting ballerinas and ballerinas in rehearsal and in rest,” but in The Star Degas depicts the grace of a ballerina as she performs her “pas seul,” or solo dance, toward the orchestra pit (The Star). “The Star is experiencing its happiness and flows from the painting to create this same feeling of pure joy in us as we look at the painting,” giving the audience a different feeling than in The Dance Class (The Star). the audience sees The Dance Class, awakens to reality of dancers, realizing that they carry with them the inevitable human trait of clumsiness like everyone else. Another fascinating aspect of The Star is the unique angle from which the piece is painted. Degas liked to experiment with different perspectives and angles, and shows this in all of its pieces. The Star's perspective is from an angle above the stage, giving the audience a full view of the dancer and those waiting in the wings. This gives the viewer an idea of ​​what goes on behind the scenes of dance, but not to the extent of The Dance Class. The Star hides the hard work, disinterest and clumsiness of the dancers, unlike The Dance Class which shows the reality of the typical dancer's life. While both pieces beautifully represent unique perspectives and overall movement, The Dance Class illustrates Impressionist ideals in a more refined manner due to the realism of the piece. Compared to Renoir's The Dancer, Degas uses innovative ways to depict dancers, such as painting their bodies in motion. using particular angles to capture them in embarrassing situations, while Renoir painted the common, formal portrait. Pierre Auguste-Renoir was a French impressionist painter who "is best known for his paintings of vibrant Parisian modernity and leisure" (Pierre-Auguste Renoir). Along with the other Impressionists, Renoir is known for using bold colors and light and shadow in his paintings. Aside from his common paintings of Parisian life, he also painted formal portraits, including The Dancer. In this oil painting, Renoir uses a variety of brushstrokes, "ranging from the delicate brushstrokes that define the dancer's face to the loose, almost careless, application of paint in the background of the painting" (The Dancer). The range from defined to loose brushstrokes is a consistent style throughout Impressionist paintings, making it a key feature of the art of the era. “Unlike Degas, whose interest lay in depicting dancers at rest, caught in unattended and unaware moments, Renoir chose to paint a more formal portrait” (The Dancer). Elaborate + Transition. Unique perspectives and angles were evident in Degas' pieces, which Renoir seemed to lack. “Sian Dancer). Degas depicted universal movement while the audience went unnoticed, while The Ballerina is in a still and posed position, looking at the audience and acknowledging them. Degas' paintings "are not traditional portraits, but studies that address the movement of the human body, exploring the physicality and discipline of dancers through the use of contorted postures and unexpected points of view", as the viewer can see when compared to portrait of Renoir. The Dancer (Schenkel). Impressionism is about the human body in movement and the experimentation of different perspectives,.