Degas: The Uncomfortable Truth About Beauty Art Talk at BUAT Gallery

April 24, 2026, at 19:00

This Art Talk at BUAT Gallery will be led by Tatiana Osetinskaya, an art historian, author of a series of lectures and an art-focused blog. Tatiana graduated from Saint Petersburg State University (Department of Art History) and spent over 10 years working at the State Museum St. Isaac’s Cathedral.

Edgar Degas is often associated with elegance, grace, and the refined world of ballet. But behind this polished surface lies a far more complex and unsettling perspective.

In this lecture, we explore the tension between beauty and discomfort in Degas’ work — fragmented bodies, unusual viewpoints, and moments stripped of idealization. His dancers are not symbols of perfection, but figures caught between discipline, fatigue, and observation.

This talk invites you to reconsider what beauty means in art — and why it is often inseparable from control, tension, and vulnerability.