PREP NOTES FOR LESSON 12 To mix clay colors, put one color on top of the other on a table. Push the clay upward with your fingers. Now fold the top toward yourself to line up with the bottom and push upward again. Repeat the fold and push, fold and push motion. Children enjoy saying the words out loud as they work with the clay. “Fold and push!” “Fold and push!” Degas Lesson 12 Edgar Degas day GAH (1834-1917)
Today our parents have a camera that they carry everywhere. But it was not always like that. During the time we are studying, the camera was a new invention. While on a routine stroll to his friend’s studio, Edgar Degas pondered how an artist might use photography. Creating portraits had been the artist’s job for centuries. With the invention of the camera, artists and photographers would now share the task of making portraits. He stopped. He would continue this train of thought later for he’d arrived at the studio of Mary Cassatt. Degas greeted Mademoiselle Cassatt and immediately began to critique the painting of a child that sat on her easel. He said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” He told Cassatt that she should only include those things in her painting that would help people to see the things that she wanted them to see. Degas gave her his best advice and filled her
in on the latest thoughts discussed by the other artists in café talks. Then, Degas left her studio, satisfied with the opinions that he had offered to the young girl from America. He would gather his pastels and paper and make his way to the Paris Opera Ballet School. Degas loved movement. He painted ballerinas twirling and stretching. Degas often showed these figures half off his canvases as if they were walking right off the edge. The unexpected angles were commonly seen in photographs when amateur photographers failed to capture the figure within the camera’s frame. Degas used the daring techniques purposefully in his paintings. He was a painter, a printmaker, a draftsman in pastels, and a sculptor in clay and wax. Edgar Degas spent all of his time on his art, pausing for only brief periods to offer his strong opinions to other artists. He rarely attended parties or dinners. For him, life was making art.
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