Learning From The Masters. "Satiric Dancer" byAndre Kertesz

R

ruben

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http://www.artsmia.org/viewer/detail.php?i=2&v=3&dept=7&artist=1332

At the above link you will find the biggest reproduction of Kertesz famous picture, Satiric Dancer I found at the net.

The only thing I can say is that since seeing this image for the first time, some 15 years ago, I carry it in my mind, as if I were hypnotized by it. And I do not understand the picture's power.

Could you analyse this picture and explain it to me ?

Thanks,
Ruben

PS
Kindly notice that at the above link the picture is zoomable several times
 
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I've opended my little book on Kèrtesz, and looking again at this photograph, what I see first of all is the swirl : your eye goes on a gentle spin propelled by the dancer's limbs. The composition is enhanced by the repeated triangulations of the knees and elbows, reflected in the scuplture on the left. But there's more : a certain freshnesss and joy of life that transpires, and makes this image elegant yet very vital. It was probably much more osé whan it was taken than today, but the impresion is still to see a woman happy to show all the sensual sparkle of her body in a playful and sophisticated way.
 
Hi mfogiel,
Thanks for your comment and thought. I forgot to mention one element I am counscious of, running quite directly to your viewpoint.

Now we are not going to open now a mini war. So before I reveal my point, which may be quite ignorant I will remind myself I am trying to learn here. And certainly your "spin" view sounds to me quite good.

But it is just that the most attracting feature I have identifyied before your post, was the model's pose of human disarticulation, both of great originality and charming. A very charming dis-harmony.

Furthermore, upon a few other pictures I have glanced to of Kertesz, he seems to have had a taste for illusionism. Here he has catched me in his net, where I don't find much orientation.

But as I said, I am quite in the darkness with this image. I will have to further think about your post.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
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I'm a big fan of Kertesz and have just bought a Frech book of his work - purely to look at the photos as my French is okay - but not to that level!

Anyway, the things that strike me about this photo are:

1) the high viewpoint. The photographer seems to want to dominate the scene.
2) the spartan surroundings juxtaposing with the model's elegant dress / shoes
3) the pose - which would not look out of place as a nude study
4) the three pieces of art - all nudes
5) the lighting - heavily focused on the model - but enough leakage to light the other objets d'art

I might be wrong but I imagine Kertesz is saying 'I can make a sensual image without having to resort to actual nudity'. Quite clearly, he's right and this is a beautifully understated image.
 
You possibly feel some sexual fetish that this Kertesz photograph stimulates, but it is sublimated into great admiration for the photograph which "you cannot get out of your mind"?


latex_girl_002.jpg
 
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ruben said:
http://www.artsmia.org/viewer/detail.php?i=2&v=3&dept=7&artist=1332

At the above link you will find the biggest reproduction of Kertesz famous picture, Satiric Dancer I found at the net.

The only thing I can say is that since seeing this image for the first time, some 15 years ago, I carry it in my mind, as if I were hypnotized by it. And I do not understand the picture's power.

Could you analyse this picture and explain it to me ?

Thanks,
Ruben

PS
Kindly notice that at the above link the picture is zoomable several times
Click to expand...

What's to explain? Your analysis is probably more valuable to you, after all the image has haunted YOU for 15 years. How can anyone explain it to you, or tell you why this image haunts you, without you telling us how it haunts you, and how it makes you feel? And if you do that, are you ready for "group analysis"? :D Look at it yourself. It's all there...and in your head.
 
The great Hungarian is one of my favourites. I love his studies from windows, his still-life shots and his shots of architectural structures.
 
I think there's a second version of this picture, perhaps three in all, but not as strong as this one. I too remember being taken with it years ago. I think one of the reasons is that it's enhanced by all the self references--by the armless statue (while she's all arms and legs) and the 2 dimensional statute picture on the opposite wall.

It might also have some references to the Ballet Russe, to Nijinsky and his bas relief style of dancing, and to George Balanchine who was just importing flat-plane, Russian constructivist dance ideas to Paris.
 
Ducky said:
Whenever I see this image I think someone threw a broken doll into a corner. I never liked it.
Click to expand...

I didn't like it at first (many years ago). I have always found the whole image to be a bit pretentious. However, I've come to like the simplicity of the image and how the model's pose, with the prominence/emphasis on the arms and the legs, almost perfectly matches the pose of the statue and the emphasis of the lack of arms and legs. The poster on the wall echos that. The pose and the model's expression are very "rag doll" like (death-like?) and the careful arrangement and the high POV makes the whole look like a miniature (a room in a doll house).


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RayPA said:
..... and the careful arrangement and the high POV makes the whole look like a miniature (a room in a doll house).
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Click to expand...

"A room in a doll house", this is definitely a depht in the picture I didn't noticed before yet I agree very much with it. This illusion for me flows more by the small sofa on which the model is laying.

Illusion. Perhaps this is the key word for this image. I find here many armonizing contradictions, so to speak since I am quite short of mental words.

Look for example that the sofa is perpendicular to the camera, while at the same time it has been set at a corner of the room, making a kind of triangle. In this triangle the meeting of the walls overpowers the sofa "flat" perpendicularity, yet there, unveiled somewhat. I mean what is unveiled about the sofa is its position, which takes the whole image to the surrealist dimension.

The model arms and legs, either as mfogiel described it: " what I see first of all is the swirl : your eye goes on a gentle spin propelled by the dancer's limbs.", or as I view it as a charming disarticulation, ceirtainly give a sense of spin

And now I can start to refere to the statue prop at the left. Its force muscles point to the walls meeting, as if the spinning of the model is to absorve it all.

I am certainly not done with this image. But advanced somewhat.

Cheers,
Ruben

PS
Raypa, you may or may not change your mind along threads in general, or this in particular. But I have. And this thread in particular is for me about discovering dephts. And you certainly has been of help to me here.

15 years of admiration are quite enough. Now I want to understand how he (Kertesz) did it to me.
 
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I seem to remember reading that Kertesz told his model (who was a satiric dancer, whatever that is) to strike a pose in keeping with the room and its contents. She made a movement and he took the picture (or two, I too seem to remember a second). So I think we should really view this image as a collaboration.
 
When touring "The Model Wife" exhibit in Chicago a few tears ago, I wandered into another room and wound up looking at a contact print of "Fork".

One of the things about Kerrtesz is that he can be an awful lot of fun.
 
Aside from the sexual aspect, which you ignore, the photo is a mild mocking of the "abstract" modern art of the day. Don't you see the point, it's a humorous commentary, a satirical photo version like a Jonathan Swift essay such as "A Modest Proposal".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

He's got "modern art" Dadaist sculpture, painting, drawings all in a bizarre little room which is reminiscent of a "Krazy Kat" cartoon like Herriman drew. Or even MORE something like a Max Fleischer "Betty Boop" cartoon. (Kertesz probably DID see Betty Boop cartoons)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krazy_Kat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Boop

Fleischer, if you google him, did many such satires of "modern art" and jazz, with astonishing background illustrations in his cartoons. He was a marvel of his time, put Disney to shame.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQhYAkYUqMI&feature=related

Here, Kertesz places these sort of foolish examples of modern art forms, with their weird contortions and distortions of reality that heralded a new interpretation of art and reality, in a crazy quilt "cartoon" room, and had the model smilingly emulate their distortions of the human form in a gentle form of satire. She laughs at, but at the same time pays homage to their originality and the zeitgeist of the era.

It's a good natured joke/editorial photo which also is pleasing to the eye. Kertesz is/was a photographer well immersed in the avante-garde culture of his time.

Several years later, Hitler would order an exhibition of "degenerate art", in which these examples of the "avant-garde" would be mocked and degraded, and used as a powerful political tool, blaming it all on, you-know-who.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art

* But I still think the photo gets Ruben hot.

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