The Dancer, final impressions

The Dancer was an exhibit exclusive to the Portland Art Museum that just recently ended. I went three times, the last just a few days before it closed. Details here. I'm no art historian, nor am I an art critic. but here are a couple of my impressions:

1)Toulouse-Lautrec is incredible, but has lost much of its potency by being replicated on the walls of far too many bars and coffeeshops. Each time, I felt underwhelmed by his work until I stopped and rid myself of all sense of cliche. This is an important ability in the appreciation of much great art and literature. There is so much 'inspiration' (read: flagrant copying) floating around out there. So much of our appreciation is colored by ubiquitousness. It was nice to stop and reflect on a thing without its built-up context. If may may borrow from Choke:

"For one flash, the Mommy had seen the mountain without thinking of logging and ski resorts and avalanches, managed wildlife, plate tectonic geology, micro-climates, rain shadow, or yin-yang locations. She'd seen the mountain without the framework of language. Without the cage of associations. She'd seen it without looking through the lens of everything she knew was true about mountains."

2) The skill of Degas was unmatched, but for my part, it was the relevance and the themes of Forain that truly captivated me. Sure, you can see the almost New Yorker-esque political cartoon-y-ness of much of it. But as with Lautrec, there was so much more. The way the dancers seemed to materialize from out of the background, like they were some natural force clothed briefly in flesh, like angels of the imagination. The way their dresses were often like clouds; ephemeral, ethereal. The way the abonne, the patrons, the fans, these men with heavy mustache and hunched spine and sinister top hat...the way they leered over the dancers. The way they were always sketched or painted so darkly, so harshly, when compared to the unbearable lightness and grace of the dancer. The concave versus the convex. The worldly versus the otherworldly.

In short, it was wondrous. It stirred in me things both old and stagnant, and new and untouched-'til-now. As all great art should.