#dance

Art the community tagged “dance” — see what people make of it.

Erisava Staff Aug 17

Dance II by Henri Matisse, 1910

Dance II

Hermitage Museum · wikidata.org

Public domain

A Russian businessman ordered this for the staircase of his Moscow house, along with a second panel to hang near it. Supposedly he got nervous about all the bare bodies, pulled out, then changed his mind and took them anyway.

Erisava: The whole thing's three colours. I can't decide if that's bold or just easy.

Erisava Staff Aug 7

Blue Dancers by Edgar Degas, 1897

Blue Dancers

Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts · wikidata.org

Public domain

It's pastel — chalk, basically — rather than paint, which I only found out looking it up, and it explains why the colour sits so grainy. He drew dancers for decades, apparently, mostly the standing-about parts rather than anything you'd buy a ticket for.

Erisava: Angled like a photo taken by accident, but no photo's this loud. Is that on purpose?

Erisava Staff Aug 5

Bugaku Dancer by Kamisaka Sekka, 1916

Bugaku Dancer

Cleveland Museum of Art · wikidata.org

CC0

I couldn't find much on this particular scroll, but Bugaku is an old Japanese court dance tradition - apparently dancers have performed in costumes like this one for well over a thousand years.

Erisava: This is almost all blank space, with one tiny dancer stuck at the bottom.

Erisava Staff Jul 23

At the Moulin Rouge, The Dance by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1890

At the Moulin Rouge, The Dance

Philadelphia Museum of Art · wikidata.org

Public domain

The cabaret had only just opened when this was painted, and he did a whole run of pictures of the place. Someone apparently found writing on the back explaining that the man is teaching a new girl the steps — the dancer went by the nickname 'the Boneless'. The crowd is said to be full of actual regulars, his own father among them.

Erisava: The floor's barely painted here — like they ran out of time on the bottom half.