Camille LaurensLittle Dancer Aged Fourteen: The True Story Behind Degas's Masterpiece

Abstract

Camille Laurens Little Dancer Aged Fourteen: The True Story Behind Degas’s Masterpiece Trans. Willard Wood Other Press C amille Laurens’s slim yet engulfing book ignited by one of Edgar Degas’s most famous works, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, serves as a reminder that even if we can’t find all the answers, we can—and ought to—ask the questions. Prying into the life of Marie van Goethem, the young model who posed for this wax sculpture by Degas, Laurens takes the reader on a journey not just through the ballet practice rooms Degas so famously captured but through the streets of nineteenth-century France with both a humane and journalistic eye that treats Marie’s life with a dignity and gentleness she likely rarely encountered in her lifetime. Laurens’s book, translated by Willard Wood, is one that will send the reader down lots of rabbit holes. Searching for the girl in Degas’s controversially received Little Dancer means understanding who the “little rats” were in the Paris Opera and what being an adolescent would have looked like before child labor protections became common. To use Degas’s own words, Laurens’s quest to unveil Marie’s story falls adjacent to the artistic pursuits Degas deeply admired, art “where the truth about life is bluntly expressed.” This journey through artists’ studios and ballet slippers also presents the unsettling task of removing our icons from pedestals yet still appreciating them. Moments where it’s deeply enriching to admire Degas’s work collide with ones that might leave the reader to pace around him like the art critics did on the unveiling of Little Dancer. Does it matter whether Degas’s intent was to direct an empathetic eye on young women like Marie? Either way, Laurens’s book does just that. She turns our modern gaze toward the intersections of the art world, the bourgeoisie, and those living in poverty in Paris two centuries ago and challenges the reader to balance questions about the wealth divide, social justice, and what an artist’s role is in articulating “the weight of the real.” She ultimately doesn’t force any conclusions, making this an attractive work of nonfiction that will leave the reader with a more intimate vantage point into the lives of both Degas and the immortalized Marie. Jen Rickard Blair Art & Web Director editor’s pick Ali: Since we were recently politically targeted in Myanmar , we had hopes that Aung San Suu Kyi would help us. She was our hero when we lived in the country. When she came to power, winning a landslide victory in the 2015 election, she turned a blind eye and now does not care about the Rohingya situation in Myanmar. Soon after this, the world’s fastest exodus of Rohingya happened in August 2017 under her administration. She is a leader and has moral authority for her country ’s minority Rohingya people. But she has failed. And Rohingya lost their last hope. On the other hand, what the international community has been doing is not enough. And justice for Rohingya who are mostly living in the diaspora, in several neighboring countries, remains elusive. If we don’t have this support from Myanmar or the international community, we have to find hope within ourselves. One of the most important interventions for Rohingya to find a way is to rebuild a life from inside themselves, doing what they can with what they have where they live. To make this happen, Rohingya leaders who live overseas should take more responsibility and prioritize these rebuilding activities. Every Rohingya should take part in leading the community to be civilized. When I am being a Rohingya, referred to as the world’s most persecuted person, I feel like I am pushed to be the world’s most hardworking person. This passion circulates now inside me from vein to vein. Byrne: The false promise of repatriation in October was resisted by Rohingya at the end of last year. For you, what is the best way out of the camps? Where do you want to be? Ali: I want to go back home. Myanmar is my motherland . We had been living there for...