George Kolbe Dance

Dancing Towards the Nature of Life

Artists often attempt to convey a message to their intended audience, putting meaning behind every piece of work they compose. Since conveying this idea is the reason for the work itself, every aspect of the work of art contributes to this overarching theme or message. In the case of George Kolbe’s Dancer, the sculpture and the entirety of its features follow this same approach. Kolbe’s subject is a Russian ballet dancer, and through the many unique features of the dancer and the medium that Kolbe chooses to work with, Kolbe is able to reveal his meaning behind the sculpture. I believe due to the Dancer’s sense of motion, frail features, naturalistic yet abstracted characteristics, and position, the artist …show more content…
Kolbe has taken some obvious artistic freedom with the depiction of the ballet dancer and one notices right away that the first liberty taken is portraying the dancer fully naked. By portraying this specific ballet dancer nude, Kolbe is able to accentuate the frail features this man has that one might not see as clearly if the dancer was in an outfit. Upon close inspection, I noticed that the only feature that looked mostly normal was the neck of the dancer, making almost every other body part smaller and more fragile in comparison. When one looks at the stomach, for example, one notices that there is a very noticeable curve towards the stomach, implying that this particular figure might be malnourished. Other body parts like the arms and backside are distinctly skinnier than how they would look on a healthy person. My interpretation of these body features is that the artist wanted to uncover the way of life of a dancer within this time period and the hardships that the dancer endures as a result of this lifestyle. When I looked at this sculpture, my mind instantly went to how modern ballet dancers have to keep an intense watch of their figure, and how many dancers develop eating disorders because of the intensity of their profession. I then thought Kolbe was trying to tell his viewers the same exact thing in a subtler way. My conclusion is that Kolbe was, in …show more content…
At first glance, this figure seems to be a naturalistic depiction of a nude dancer. All of the body parts are well represented and seem to flow together in a natural way, just like the human body. Certain bones seem to bulge outwards due to the glare of the material, and the facial features are subtle yet obviously depicting a somber yet serious expression. Unlike Myron’s Discobolus which obviously fails at sculpting certain features in a natural way, Dancer is much more believable as a natural sculpture. The realism of this sculptures makes the idea of the suffering of the dancer more believable. Yet upon closer inspection, certain features are abstracted slightly in order to further portray the artist’s intentions for this particular work of art. The first feature is the size of the head in comparison to the rest of the body. A realistic head to body ratio is about 1 to 7, but this sculpture is slightly off because the ratio is about 1 to 8. By doing this, Kolbe puts the focus not on the head and face, like most sculptures, but instead on the rest of the body. When looking at the piece, I first would look at the face of the dancer, but almost immediately my eyes were drawn towards the rest of the body and its frail features. Through the abstraction of the head, Kolbe puts the spotlight on

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