--An analysis on French Comedians and the relation between painting and balletFigure 1, Antoine Watteau, French Comedians, playing a tragi-comedy, 1720, Oil on canvas, 22 1/2 x 28 3/4 in. (57.2 x 73 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. Under Louis XIV’s reign in the seventeenth century, a particular style of dance was developed for ballet to correspond with the new use of the proscenium stage; presenting the body outwardly, the whole scene was a picture “framed” by the proscenium.[1] French Comedians, playing a tragi-comedy (figure 1), a painting made by Antoine Watteau in 1720, borrowed that proscenium stage, or to be more exact, the proscenium arches, and put it into the background composition. However, it was not only a stage or some other fragmented elements that painting “borrowed” from ballet, it was the whole system of body gestures, the costumes, as well as the aesthetic idea of creating certain extent of gracefulness that impacted painting by ballet. Nevertheless, the influences between ballet and painting never followed a one-way direction; they have shaped each other’s composition and aesthetics during centuries. By taking into account of Watteau’s painting French Comedians and Noverre’s writing on ballet d’action, Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets, one could conclude that the association between ballet and painting, two art forms which have learned from and impacted by each other through centuries, is more likely a product of shared means and goals. Louis XIV not only summarized his power through ballets, he also used dance as a kind of social etiquette which influenced other aspects of art world. Even though Louis did not invent the connection of dance and etiquette since they had long been bedfellows, however, he took this fixation on etiquette to unprecedented extremes. In the books written by dance masters at the time,[2] one could learn the fine details of how to bow and take off one’s hat; how to enter an apartment, pass a superior on the street, or show respect in leaving a room; how to hold one’s skirts, when to lift the eyes, and how deeply to bend when and for whom; how to become, in a word, a “beautiful being.”[3] The zeal for categorization and codification of bodily refinements established a new system of nobility which was represented by those aristocratic bodies so that styles of bodily representation can themselves probe questions of nature, identity, and social dynamics. However, this establishment of etiquette was not only restricted within the art of dance or to showing off the King’s political power, it was intertwined with architecture, graphic arts, and most importantly, paintings, whose manipulation or portrayals of the body emphasized qualities of movement and gestures as a central expressive goal.[4] As a result, many painters at the time employed dances into their paintings, and among them the most renowned was Jean-Antoine Watteau, who used forms associated with the aristocratic body to create his personal artistic project.[5] In his famous paintings of social gatherings of noble people, the fête galante paintings, even though the figures seem to imply social actions of conversing, grouping, and amusedly regarding one’s neighbor, one would find it hard to interpret the scene as a descriptive recording of everyday activity, given the intense artfulness with which the figures are posed and positioned.[6] The painter designed the grouping and postures of those figures in such a delicate way that as if he were the choreographer himself, composing a scene of ballet. It was from Watteau’s paintings of fête galante that the phenomenon of galanterie came into appearance. Even though this concept of galanterie, as Aaron Wile recently argued, resists easy characterization, it above all promoted an ideal based on refinement, variety, and a desire to please in which the cold dominion of reason and the fiery excesses of the passions alike were rejected in favor of playing and douceur, which encompasses the notions of softness, gentleness, and sweetness.[7] However, the aesthetic of galanterie is not exclusive to Watteau’s fête galante paintings, it also comes forth in other paintings by him, including French Comedians, playing a tragi-comedy. Besides the appearance of the imagery of a putto on the right side of the painting which can often be seen in other paintings, French comedian is comparable to fête galante paintings in a way that it is composed with artful bodies and thus creating a scene of gracefulness, softness, or douceur. Instead of trying to interpret the anecdote implied by this painting, I put efforts in observing the details of its composition, especially of the costumes of characters and of their body languages, to find the implicit relationship between dance and painting. First of all, in all kinds of visual art comprised by bodies, posture is the key, and refined and beautiful body representation require characters, according to dance theory, to “stand erect but easy, head upright and shoulders sloping back with arms held loosely to the side, hands curved and posed, toes gently turned out.”[8] These features can be easily noticed in our painting, especially with two main characters in the center of the painting standing gracefully with shoulders slightly bent backwards. Moreover, even though the feet of the actresses are concealed under their dresses, the two actors are standing with feet turned out forty-five degrees at the hip, which is considered as the “true” or noble position.[9] By doing this their postures demonstrate “an air of ease” which can only be achieved from dancing. In contrast with the four characters on stage, the fifth figure on the right side of the painting, stepping onto the stage from the back, does not demonstrate such kind of galanterie. His stout and bouncy body might indicate that he is comic actor who is the least refined type.[10] Apart from their postures, the painting also implies a hierarchy of bodies—not all bodies are equal. In this painting, the main actor stands in the center of the painting while the actress stands slightly behind him. On each of them stand a male and a female minor character. This fits with the idea of ballet of the eighteenth century which says that “graduation, inequality, and difference” were both natural and desirable.[11] In this way, the whole painting can achieve certain extent of “balance” which is not only important in ballet but also primary in painting composition. Moreover, this hierarchy is not only shown by their position to one another but also implied by their costumes. At the time, ballet dancers dressed in the latest fashions using the most expensive and luxurious fabrics, and their social status was implicated by their body decorations—who a dancer was onstage also depended on what he wore. In this painting, the principle male figure wears an old-fashioned formal costume: a hat with plumes, a wig, and a fringed, skirted silver garment lavishly embodied with palmettes, all of which were symbols of high birth.[12] His silk stockings and red boots draw attention to his bowed legs and skinny ankles, revealing a resemblance with ballet players in contemporary court dances. Moreover, this also indicates that the convention of costume gave men a distinct advantage—their Roman-styled dress or fashionable skirted waistcoats, breaches, and silk stockings left the leg free and visible.[13] On the other hand, women had no such freedoms. In our painting, the two female wear heavy skirts that fall to the floor, worn over petticoats and topped with mantuas, aprons, and stiff bodices and corsets, conspired to constrain movement in the interests of upright posture and dignified carriage.[14] All these body decorations and make up were designed to build up from nature and make the body a work of art. Moreover, as Jennifer Homans put it in her book Apollo’s Angels, “the point was not accurately to depict a character but to respect the rules of decorum: dress was a way of indicating a character’s place in the social hierarchy, and the quality, number, value, and length of fabric, plumes, jewelry, and trains were all calibrated to status.”[15] Everything in this painting, from the stage composition to the costumes of characters, is not only influenced by the art of dance, but more fundamentally by its social context. Many of the details in French Comedian, playing a tragi-comedy were influenced by dance, however, this also makes me wonder whether it was the dance that influenced painting or the other way around. In other words, all the evidence that we see in this paintings, such as the figures’ gestures, their costumes, the bodily hierarchy, and other components, could not only be learned by painters from dancing, but it is also possible that dance choreographers at the time examined masterpieces made by former painting masters and “stole” the methods of composition from them. As a matter of fact, Jean George Noverre, one of the most renowned dancing theorist of the eighteenth century, encourages the maîtres de ballet to compose a dance like a painter in his famous dance treatise, Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballet. Noverre thinks that the maîtres de ballet should, like the painting masters who had been handed down to posterity, infuse their works of ballet with their own emotions, ideas, and sensibility. He says in his first letter in Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets that “a ballet is a picture, or rather a series of pictures connected one with the other by the plot which provides the theme of the ballet; the stage is, as it were, the canvas on which the composer expresses his ideas; the choice of the music, scenery and costumes are his colors; the composer is the painter.”[16] The reason why those of the maître de ballet could not made themselves so celebrated in their day as most painting masters did is that, according to Noverre, they were only mechanical repetition composed with beautiful physical proportions, great precision in execution of airs, graceful development of arms and an extreme lightness in making steps.[17] However, this kind of ballet did not have the power of paler à l’âme[18], or, speaking to the heart. The good ballet, or Noverre termed as ballet d’action, should speak with fire and energy, replacing the symmetrical and formal figures with transgressing truth and shocking possibility. However, to achieve this, he thought, the maîtres de ballet must consult the works of great painters, because the examination of masterpieces of paintings could remind the maîtres de ballet of what the “truth” is. To be more specific, by looking at different figures in paintings and observing their actions, expressions, emotions, and other visual representations, the maîtres de ballet could learn the individuality of each character. Therefore, their sensibility could be sharpened and thus help them bring about well-composed ballets which were supposed to be a “living picture” of the passions, manners, customs, and all other kinds of emotions.[19] As Watteau and other painters represent emotions with body language, Noverre thinks that gestures are offspring of feeling and the faithful interpreter of every mood. [20] By arguing that previous gestures were confined within too restricted limits to produce great effects, he thinks that each gesture, each attitude, each port de bras,[21] must possess a different expression. In other words, instead of putting so much energy into execution of movements, he thinks that maîtres de ballets should put it into expression—gesture is the “countenance”[22] of soul, and its effect must be immediate and cannot fail to achieve its aim when it is true. Moreover, just as painters tell emotions from their figures’ facial expressions, dance is not only composed of bodily representation but also expressed by faces. According to Noverre, “a man’s face is the mirror of his passions, in which the movements and agitations of the soul are displayed, and in which tranquility, joy, sadness, fear and hope are expressed in turn.”[23] When one look at a painting, he can hardly ignore the importance of face because, apart from costumes, colors, and body gestures, faces sometimes tell us most about the character’s emotions. However, even though facial expressions might be considered more importantly in painting than in dancing, Noverre thinks that all the movements would become purely automatic and meaningless if the face remain speechless and do not animate or invigorate them.[24] Watteau may not be the greatest painter in history, nor does Noverre sound as radical as he thought he did, however, both of them, as well as their works, demonstrate some connection between ballet and painting. In French Comedian, many components are influenced by ballet dancing, including the character’s body gestures, their costumes, and the composition of the painting. At the same time, Noverre says in his famous dance treatise, Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets, that dance masters should learn from and be compared with great painters in capturing the true emotions of human beings. As I mentioned earlier in this paper, ballet and painting might not be considered just as separate art forms; instead, the association between them was, is, and will be more likely a product of shared means and goals, the ways to achieve great aesthetic values. Notes: [1] Sarah R Cohen, introduction to Art, Dance, and the Body in French Culture of the Ancien Régime (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p5 [2] Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (New York: Random House, 2010), p21 [3] Ibid. [4] Cohen, introduction to Art, Dance, and the Body, p6 [5] Ibid, p8 [6] Sarah R Cohen, “Watteau’s fête galante and the Artful Body” in Antoine Watteau: Perspective on the Artist and the Culture of His Time edited by Mary D Sheriff (Newark: University of Delaware, 2006), p94 [7] Aaron Wile, Watteau, Reverie, and Selfhood (The Art Bulletin: 96:3, 319-337, DOI: 10.1080/0043079.2014.889526, Published online: 02 Oct 2014.) [8] Homans, Apollo’s Angles, p21 [9] Homans, Apollo’s Angles, p23 [10] Ibid, p27 [11] Ibid, p26 [12] Ibid, p27 [13] Ibid, p28 [14] Ibid, p29 [15] Ibid, p27 [16] Jean Georges Noverre, Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets (Londres: et se trouve a Paris, chez la veuve Dessain junior, Seconde édition, 1783), p5 [17] Marion Kant, “PART II: The eighteenth century: revolutions in technique and spirit” in The Cambridge Companion to Ballet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p56 [18] Cyril W Beaumont, trans, Letters on Dancing and Ballet (Brooklyn, N.Y., Dance Horizons, 1966), p5 [19] Ibid, p16 [20] Beaumont, Letters on Dancing and Ballet, p16 [21] Noverre, lettres sur la danse et sur les ballet, p199 [22] Beaumont, Letters on Dancing and Ballet, p100 [23] Ibid, p78 [24] Ibid, p78 Bibliography Primary sources:
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AuthorLayne |