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Waltz
Felix Vallotton • Painting, 1893
Description of the artwork «Waltz»
Picture "Waltz" was established in 1893 during his participation in the Nabi group. However, Vallotton is a man of unusually broad creative views, so many techniques and styles that continually interest him, prevented him from adhering to canons and frames.
In the picture you can easily notice all the requirements of the community, the search for answers to questions where art is mixed with philosophy, uncertainty with symbolism, a riddle with simplification. But the work, which traditionally belongs to the direction of “Nabi” by art critics, turned out to be made in the individual manner of Vallotton, with its own accents.
The painting depicts a pair of dancers soaring in skating circles in the Ice Palace on the round stage of the Champs-Elysées in Paris. Everything here is subject to the principles of "Nabi", which was intended to free the painting from the shackles of realism. There is no perspective here, and all work is reduced to a flattening and simplification of the form. But simplification is not just a goal, but rather a means by which special expressiveness is achieved.
The characters here are not individual dancers, but couples. The pair as a whole is like a ready-made artistic image that does not need to be "dismembered." All that needs to be said is an expressive stroke, rotating ellipses, tiny multi-colored dots — sprays of ice consecrated by searchlights, lifted by the dancing skates.
It would seem that there is no prospect here, but still Vallotton does not completely abandon spatiality. The red balustrade line on the right outlines the boundaries of the rink. But the framework of the canvas, which is familiar to the viewer, explodes the central character of the entire composition. This is a young woman in the lower right corner in the arms of her partner who turned her happy head to the viewer. The fragment, as if the frame snatched by the camera, creates a feeling of suddenness, enhances rhythm and dizzying movement. On a common fading background, the dancer looks as if engraved on a tree: laconic with a neat black outline. Perhaps the woodcut inspired the author to such a contrast.
The painting is in the Museum of Fine Arts. Andre Malraux in Le Havre, France.
Author: Lyudmila Lebedeva
In the picture you can easily notice all the requirements of the community, the search for answers to questions where art is mixed with philosophy, uncertainty with symbolism, a riddle with simplification. But the work, which traditionally belongs to the direction of “Nabi” by art critics, turned out to be made in the individual manner of Vallotton, with its own accents.
The painting depicts a pair of dancers soaring in skating circles in the Ice Palace on the round stage of the Champs-Elysées in Paris. Everything here is subject to the principles of "Nabi", which was intended to free the painting from the shackles of realism. There is no perspective here, and all work is reduced to a flattening and simplification of the form. But simplification is not just a goal, but rather a means by which special expressiveness is achieved.
The characters here are not individual dancers, but couples. The pair as a whole is like a ready-made artistic image that does not need to be "dismembered." All that needs to be said is an expressive stroke, rotating ellipses, tiny multi-colored dots — sprays of ice consecrated by searchlights, lifted by the dancing skates.
It would seem that there is no prospect here, but still Vallotton does not completely abandon spatiality. The red balustrade line on the right outlines the boundaries of the rink. But the framework of the canvas, which is familiar to the viewer, explodes the central character of the entire composition. This is a young woman in the lower right corner in the arms of her partner who turned her happy head to the viewer. The fragment, as if the frame snatched by the camera, creates a feeling of suddenness, enhances rhythm and dizzying movement. On a common fading background, the dancer looks as if engraved on a tree: laconic with a neat black outline. Perhaps the woodcut inspired the author to such a contrast.
The painting is in the Museum of Fine Arts. Andre Malraux in Le Havre, France.
Author: Lyudmila Lebedeva
