In stark contrast, Edgar Degas' rejection of a romantic, idealized concept of women scandalized the art world of his time. Why, the critics asked, would anyone want to expose women in such intimate, unflattering poses? Degas reportedly declared, "Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience, but these women of mine are honest, simple folk, unconcerned by any other interest than those involved with their physical conditions."

  Mike Young is drawn to the actual beauty of the human figure. He feels that the ultimate incarnation of beauty is the female form. In all of his sketches and paintings he is trying to capture this elusive vision and offer it for the world to appraise.




 Degas had long been drawn to the movement of the female form. This interest began in his youth when he undertook some monumental paintings of a ballet teacher presiding over his studio of young dancers. Degas spent hours observing dancers, his eye constantly alert to new perceptions: "One has to repeat the same thing ten or rather a hundred times. In art nothing must be left to accident - not even movement."

 The sentiment that nothing must be left to accident is shared by Mike Young who carefully works out the details for each painting before preparing his canvases and setting up his sitters. All other elements of the painting are included in the overall design only as an enhancement to the figure. They are essentially a backdrop. Each piece of architecture in his paintings is carefully arranged to create the overall illusion of an interior space within which his incarnations of beauty will rest. Trees or columns serve as structures against which the figure may recline. Sometimes he will use the linear architectural elements as a contrast to the fluid rounded curves of the figure. At other times he will find a classical architectural element based on the human figure and place it next to the figure, repeating the same shape or curve for our visual pleasure and enjoyment. Little thumbnail sketches are the road maps of his mental journey.






 With Degas compositional sketches were rare. He would go to the arsenal of sketches that he had made from life, choose several and arrange them on a canvas. The figures could be enlarged, reduced, reversed or the shadows might be changed to fit the new composition. "All kinds of backgrounds run through my head," He wrote to Gustave Moreau. In this way he very carefully constructed his compositions to achieve the illusion of a casual moment in time.
 If a particular pose intrigued Degas, he would repaint, or redraw it many times developing new techniques and approaches to the media along the way. He pioneered the pastel medium drawing on different colored grounds, juxtaposing brilliant flashes of pure color against color mixes which had long been labeled by artists as "dull", "muddy", or "lifeless". Along the way he developed a love for the textures and shapes of the pastel stroke itself, and began to incorporate this degree of "unfinish" into his paintings. The results are very dynamic images where the figures caught in mid motion have blurred edges similar to a photograph of a moving figure or hatched lines that continue the movement across the form. Degas single-handedly brought the pastel painting to the level of a serious art medium and his techniques have yet to be surpassed by an artist in the past century.

 Another interesting consequence of his 'capture the pose now and worry about composition later' approach was the development of a new point of view. Degas began to paint dancers from behind, singers from below, and performances from backstage. He began to see himself as a chronicler of modern day life who painted the regular person doing mundane tasks. This was his idea when he began the series of women bathers. He also painted a series of women trying on hats and ironing, but it was his bathers that really had the critics up in arms.
 
 Unlike Mike Young who completes his paintings in one session, Edgar Degas couldn't seem to let go of his pieces. He was constantly reworking images or sculptures. He would organize his fellow artists for an exhibition and then not have anything he was ready to show in it himself. "How I wish I could call in someone to make a cast. But I'm still not finished with my sculpture; I keep having one disaster after another. . . It's taking too much responsibility to leave something in bronze - that's a substance for eternity." When his friend Vollard visited the studio one day Degas told him exultantly that the dancer he had been working on for a long time was nearly right: "This time I've got her. One or two more little sessions and Herard can come." The next day the dancer was once again a ball of wax. "I know you, Vollard, you're thinking what it was worth, but not even a hat full of diamonds could have matched my delight in demolishing the thing for the pleasure of starting all over again."


 Degas died of natural causes at the age of 83. Though he enjoyed his brother and sister's children, he never began a family of his own. He still felt he had unfinished business near the end of his life when bad eyesight and the loss of his studio forced him to finally give up his life-long pursuit. 

 "You blank out everything around you, and once you are alone, you annihilate yourself, you actually kill yourself with disgust. I've made too many plans, and here I am, absolutely blocked, impotent. I've lost the thread. I thought I still had time: what I wasn't doing, what I was kept from doing, amidst all my troubles and despite my bad eyesight. I never gave up the hope of getting down to it one fine day. I piled up all my plans in a closet and always carried the key around with me, and now I've lost that key."