Have no fear about my running off to the circus! Right now the Spring college rodeo is taking place a few blocks away, but I’ve not been much tempted to photograph there. Partly it is in an arena rather than in natural light, but more importantly it would not be the same intimate, flank-rubbing experience directly with the horses. Despite intellectualizing about formal aspects of the images, and jesting about conceptual approaches, it’s that seemingly basic and definitely pleasurable connection that keeps me working on my project.

I agree the horses are more pastoral/placid in the images here, and even in others that have more motion, there’s an innocence to it rather than an intention or order as in a dance. Degas is certainly about more than the compositional similarities I pointed out. One aspect that is also similar to my thinking is an interest in interaction of the dancers or horses. The relations can be provocative, playful, affectionate, casually familiar, or accidental. I don’t think the juxtapositions per se illuminate this much, but contemplating the Degas in this light does give me some post facto insight when I turn to the horse images.

A juxtapositional artist.

Went looking to see if Degas had been knighted by the French government. If so, he would have enjoyed the title of chevalier, which would fit in nicely with the horse theme. Doesn’t appear he was.

I often return to Leslie’s site for a refresher on her thoughts. Her interjection of Hello Kitty into the grand art context does serve as an open door. In this series she combines cultural products, taken from across the spectrum. Different as they are, they possess a common identity as products of the human hand and mind.

Your comparison of Degas’ dancers and the horses seems to place the point of comparison in the hands of the artist. Degas’ dancers are bundles of energy - potential and otherwise - and have an almost anxious focus, while the horses come across as pastoral. The dancers are about attainment and the horses, behavior. I tend to compare the formal elements in the images without getting much of a buzz over their juxtaposed identities. A silly memory keeps cropping up, of the circus and of little poodles in tutus, riding on ponies and jumping through hoops. I guess I’m building a conceptual bridge thereby. Then we’re back to June’s post about the Portland Museum exhibit where a painting of circus animals might have been placed off to one side as a further commentary on performers -as-commodities. By no means, Steve, do I recommend your hieing off to a three-ring somewhere in search of material.

yikes! who knew what late-night babbling might provoke? To be fair, June had a recent post somewhere (here? RCC?) with her thoughts on an exhibition that included Degas, so that may also have influenced him coming so quickly to mind.

Thanks for the link to the Hello Kitty works. Somewhere I read something about how the relative blandness (e.g., uniformity of features) of the anime/manga characters allowed the viewer to project her/himself into them more easily. I wonder if that is part of Kitty’s disturbing yet weirdly compelling helium-head allure.

The proprietor of another blog I read ( http://vivienb.blogspot.com/ ) has embarked on a book project through a print-on-demand site: http://www.blurb.com/
It seems to be going fairly well. I don’t recall if any of you mentioned it, so I thought I’d send along the url.
(hint, hint)

Thanks for the Longo reference, that was indeed similar. He experiments more with cropping, coming very close or even cutting into the subject.

For my conceptual project, I intend to expand beyond Degas and, following Leslie’s example, insert horses into a variety of famous paintings, substituting for similar figures. In fact, for extra irony, I might just appropriate her Hello Masterpieces and insert them alongside Kitty.

Regarding your pairings of horse photos w/ Degas paintings, I know you were just trying to illustrate a point, but take a look at what you’ve done here! Each of those pairings would make a great diptych! You’ve become a conceptual artist right before our eyes…