The RISD Museum's new exhibition "Edgar Degas: Six Friends at Dieppe" attempts to provide a comprehensive context for what can sometimes appear to be inaccessible art.
For example, Edgar Degas' pastel drawing "Six Friends at Dieppe" features six men standing as if in their own separate worlds, each one seemingly unaware of the person next to him.
An underlying tension among the characters is evoked in this simple drawing. But as the title explains, we are to believe that the men are all friends, a fact that is not otherwise immediately apparent. Curiosity drives us to want to know more about the men in the portrait as well as their relationship to the artist.
This particular piece becomes part of a narrative in RISD's display of over 70 artworks by Degas, an Impressionist artist and his contemporaries, including books, letters and other supporting documentation that together make all of the art more accessible for viewers.
Through six separate displays, each one devoted to one of the friends depicted in the drawing, the exhibition critically examines Degas' relationships with these individuals - librettist Ludovic Halévy, his son Daniel, theatre censor Albert Boulanger-Cavé, French artists Jacques-Emile Blanche and Henri Gervex and British painter Walter Sickert.
Each display presents a mini-biography of the friend presented in the drawing, but more importantly elucidates the various forces - artistic and personal - that drove Degas' career. Items range from the purely artistic - a sketch by the French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, one of Degas' favorite artists - to more personal pieces, such as a portrait of Degas by Blanche, which ultimately caused a falling out between the friends.
The conflict began when Blanche allowed the portrait to be printed in a magazine, according to Maureen O'Brien, curator of painting and sculpture at the RISD Museum. Degas felt betrayed by his friend, whom he had explicitly forbidden to show or reproduce the image, she said. Degas subsequently demanded the return of the offending portrait as well as several drawings by Ingres that he had lent to Blanche and, most significantly, "Six Friends at Dieppe," which had been in the Blanche family collection for nearly 20 years. By that time, Degas was already estranged from two older friends depicted in the pastel drawing: Halévy and Boulanger-Cavé. At the moment the drawing was made, however, the six characters in the portrait were all connected through friendship, O'Brien said.
Degas eventually placed the pastel drawing in the hands of dealers. After years of traveling through various museums and galleries, "Six Friends at Dieppe" was finally sold to RISD in 1931.
Degas created "Six Friends at Dieppe" in the summer of 1885 while vacationing in the resort town of Dieppe on the Normandy coast of France. Though the title refers to Dieppe as the setting, there is no visual indicator in the drawing of the place where the characters stand. O'Brien likened the work to "six characters on a blank stage in search for a story."
Unlike many of his other works, especially his portraits of ballerinas that tend to "get romanticized a lot," "Six Friends at Dieppe" is less formal according to Kim Westfall RISD '08, who wandered around the exhibit Saturday. "This is more of an ordinary and everyday thing," she said.
The casual nature of the painting itself and the surrounding displays that focus on "Six Friends at Dieppe" make the exhibition approachable. This accessibility is at the heart of the exhibition's purpose, O'Brien said.
Ultimately, by focusing on one work of art, the exhibition allows the viewer to take a critical look at the artist and the period, to become a "specialist" on Degas, she said.
"A lot of people don't get a chance to study art history, but they really want to know. Once you get the hook into it, that's the stepping stone."
While the exhibition tries to appeal to a broad audience, it is unlikely to be seen off of College Hill in the near future. Because of its fragile makeup, the pastel drawing will not be able to travel outside the RISD Museum, said Linda Catano, paper preservation specialist of the RISD Museum.
Unlike most pastels, "Six Friends at Dieppe" does not have the traditional fixative that would anchor the pigments to the paper. The pastel is thus delicate to vibration, a factor that could cause it to be damaged during transport, Catano said.
This exhibition thus marks a rare opportunity for Rhode Island residents to take a look at the life and art of a notoriously private man.
"(Degas) wasn't somebody who sought prizes. He wasn't interested in the public aspect of it," O'Brien said.
Although compositionally Degas' body of work is similar to the art of the other Impression-ists of his day, the way he viewed modern life and translated that vision onto paper had a distinct realistic quality, O'Brien said. "He stands alone."
"Six Friends at Dieppe" will be on display at the RISD Museum through Jan. 15, 2006. Admission is free for Brown students with valid ID. The museum is open to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit www.risdmuseum.org for more information.
Related concurrent exhibitions include "French Drawing in the Time of Degas," which features works by Degas' peers and predecessors, and "Japonisme: Japanese Prints and Their Influence in France," which presents a tradition of art popular in the late 19th century, that greatly influenced Degas' own work.
