Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Monday, April 16, 2018 in Events, HART, Lectures, News, Student/Alumni, VRC.

The Denver Art Museum provided the perfect setting for an April 2018 Commodore Classroom featuring Leonard Folgarait, Distinguished Professor of History of Art, and the current exhibit Degas: A Passion for Perfection. Folgarait joined the Denver Vanderbilt Chapter on April 15 to discuss the work of Edgar Degas and to tour the museum’s exhibit of more than 100 works by the artist from 1855-1906. Following his lecture, “Paris, Impressionism and Degas,” guests viewed the exhibit using newly acquired knowledge and appreciation of the artist and his works. Folgarait has frequently traveled to Paris to teach a Maymester class and knows the city like a native.

Degas’s paintings, drawings, pastels, etchings, monotypes, and sculptures in bronze are on view at the Denver Art Museum, the sole American venue for the exhibition, through May 20. The exhibit focuses on the most prominent and recurring themes throughout Degas’s 60-year career, including his interest in learning from the art of the past and from that of his contemporaries, a lifelong fascination with the nude, a passion for horses, and his strong interest in opera and dance.

The works reflect the artist’s transformation from a portraitist and painter of historical subjects to one interested in the contemporary life of late-nineteenth-century Paris. By experimenting constantly throughout his career he developed techniques that allowed him to capture modern subject matter through sharp and precise lighting, such as café concerts, street scenes with new electric lighting, sporting events, and theatrical settings.