Ballet X Art

The grace, discipline and emotional expressionism of ballet has inspired great works of art for centuries — and in turn, great ballets have been born from the inspiration and unique visual style of famous artists. 

Ballet in art

No one is more closely associated with ballet and art than 19th-century French Impressionist Edgar Degas. He obsessively returned to the ballet studio for inspiration, capturing intimate backstage moments of dancers mid-stretch, fixing costumes or resting between rehearsals. He was interested in the vulnerability and intensity of ballet and the contrast between the public-facing perfection on stage and the grit and exhaustion backstage. 

British artist Dame Laura Knight DBE had a similar observational approach to her works, which captured the backstage life of those performing with the Ballet Russe and English National Ballet in the early 20th century. She was fascinated not only with the glamour and poise of a performance but also with the domestic realities behind the scenes. Many of Knight’s ballet paintings are set in dressing rooms and capture the focused energy of both dancers and costumiers preparing for a performance. 

German Impressionist Ernst Oppler was said to have become obsessed with ballet after seeing prima ballerina Anna Pavlova perform with the Ballet Russe in 1909. Unlike other artists who sought to capture the spirit of ballet as an entire art form, Oppler was inspired by the distinct personalities of ballet’s stars. His thousands of etchings, sketches and paintings included Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina and Pavlova, who he would draw in-situ on stage, even inventing a special light-up pen to allow him to work in the dark wings side-stage as they performed. 

Not just an Impressionist fad, ballet continues to inspire visual artists to this day. Contemporary Australian artist Sally Smart creates large-scale collage paintings and sculptures that explore themes of gender and identity politics and the relationship between body and cultural history. Smart has an ongoing series of works titled The Artist’s Ballet, including a room-scale installation of collage, video, and dangling puppets for The National 2021 biennial of Contemporary Australian Art. Incorporating photographs and designs from 20th-century dance and art history, it was created during the COVID-19 lockdowns, a period of great uncertainty and isolation for performers, themes which are also explored in Smart’s work. 

These collaborations between past and present, between design and dance, show how artists do more than just depict dancers, they translate ephemeral movement into something tangible. They capture not just the physicality and beauty of ballet, but also the effort, artifice, and cultural meaning of performance in a visual language reminiscent of the contemporary day.