On Oct 2, 2008, at 2:36 PM, William Conger wrote:
They were influenced of course by photography but they were also trying to suggest the sweep of the gaze, the gaze being the rectangle of the canvas.
And to add to that, we modernistas of course are so completely acclimated to the notion of "cropping," a concept that did not exist before the photograph, that we are not aware of its newness--although there was a superficially similar compositional device used a long time ago, as far back as Poussin and other, often found in the technique of "quadro riportato" (easel paintings of illusionistic scenes attached to ceilings). In such paintings, there are (typically dark) foreground elements on each side of the scene, helping to draw the viewer's gaze into the illusionistic distance. Not exactly like cropping, but nonetheless a device that plays on the way the scene ends at the frame.
Degas, you rightly point out, was adept at placing figures at the edges of the canvas, *as if at the edge of the frame*, suggesting both the sweeping view and the truncating of the scene by the camera. And his racetrack paintings and such were made before the advent of motion pictures, which made the dynamic effect of the framing edge even more noticeable.
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