Degas on himself.
. "I felt myself so badly made, so badly equipped, so weak, whereas it seemed to me, that my calculations on art were so right. I sulked against the whole world and against myself."
to the eyes of Paul Valéry, who describes him opening the door of his atelier, “shuffling about in slippers, dressed like a pauper, his trousers hanging, never buttoned.”2 The portrait painter Jacques-Émile Blanche saw him as neither a bourgeois nor an artist, but as; if he makes a gesture, that gesture is imperious, as expressive as his hand in drawing; but he quickly retreats to a pose as defensive as that of a woman concealing her nakedness, the habit of a solitary soul who veils or protects his personality.3
Degas himself, toward the end of his life, nearly blind, painted a self-portrait and said that he looked like an old dog, while his friend the sculptor Bartholomé found him to be “more beautiful than ever, like an old Homer with his eyes fixed on eternity.”4
He never had one quality without having its opposite: he was touchd with a soupcon of sans-gêne,”
Degas was a loner. He had always felt alone. Alone because of his character, alone because of his unyielding principles, alone because of his severe judgments. He pushed this taste for a cloistered life to the limits of absurdity.
And beneath the jest lurked a very firm conviction. He wrote to his friend the artist Pierre Georges Jeanniot:
Crushing bouts of depression led him to write: “A door shuts inside one and not only on one’s friends. One suppresses everything around one and once all alone one finally kills oneself, out of disgust,” and he added: “I thought there would always be enough time…. I stored up all my plans in a cupboard and always carried the key on me. I have lost that key.” there was something of the inventor in this bricoleur always ready to try something new, often for the pleasure of starting over from scratch when he finally hit a wall,
In some of his brothel depiction hastilylimned gestures may be masturbatory…but here all. decorum is relinquished, all sublimation renounced, all inhibition surrendered…
Even wearing his tinted lenses, he couldn’t stand intense light and he decreed that the sight of the sea was too Monet for his eyes
In a letter to his sister, he described these landscapes as imaginary and emphasized his lack of interest in accurate description.
But Degas had always had a hard time admitting that a painting was finished. Even after it was sold, an artwork could always be revised. His friend Henri Rouart learned this at his own expense. He had purchased a pastel that he dearly loved. Sometime later, Degas came to dinner and left with the pastel under his arm, to spruce up a detail. Rouart never saw his painting again. Degas revised it to such an extent that it was ruined.
Degas always striving to attain the utmost precision of form, drafting and redrafting, canceling, advancing by endless recapitulation, never admitting that his work has reached its posthumous stage: so too Degas from sheet to sheet, tracing to tracing, he continually revises his drawing. He digs into it, squeezes and envelops it
Source:
Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty
Degas himself, toward the end of his life, nearly blind, painted a self-portrait and said that he looked like an old dog, while his friend the sculptor Bartholomé found him to be “more beautiful than ever, like an old Homer with his eyes fixed on eternity.”4
He never had one quality without having its opposite: he was touchd with a soupcon of sans-gêne,”
Degas could be charming or unpleasant. He possessed—and affected—the worst possible disposition; yet there were days when he was quite unpredictably delightful.
Degas was a loner. He had always felt alone. Alone because of his character, alone because of his unyielding principles, alone because of his severe judgments. He pushed this taste for a cloistered life to the limits of absurdity.
And beneath the jest lurked a very firm conviction. He wrote to his friend the artist Pierre Georges Jeanniot:
You have chosen to give us the air of the outdoors, the air we breathe, the open air. Well, a painting is first and foremost a product of the artist’s imagination, it should never be a copy…the air that we see in a painting by a master is never air that can be breathed.He concluded with a phrase that might have been written by Proust:
It’s all very well to copy what one sees, it’s much better to draw what one can see only in one’s memory. That is a transformation in which one’s ingenuity toils hand in hand with one’s memory…. You reproduce nothing but that which has made an impression upon you, which is to say, the necessary. There your memories and your imagination are freed of the tyranny of nature.12
Crushing bouts of depression led him to write: “A door shuts inside one and not only on one’s friends. One suppresses everything around one and once all alone one finally kills oneself, out of disgust,” and he added: “I thought there would always be enough time…. I stored up all my plans in a cupboard and always carried the key on me. I have lost that key.” there was something of the inventor in this bricoleur always ready to try something new, often for the pleasure of starting over from scratch when he finally hit a wall,
In some of his brothel depiction hastilylimned gestures may be masturbatory…but here all. decorum is relinquished, all sublimation renounced, all inhibition surrendered…
Even wearing his tinted lenses, he couldn’t stand intense light and he decreed that the sight of the sea was too Monet for his eyes
In a letter to his sister, he described these landscapes as imaginary and emphasized his lack of interest in accurate description.
But Degas had always had a hard time admitting that a painting was finished. Even after it was sold, an artwork could always be revised. His friend Henri Rouart learned this at his own expense. He had purchased a pastel that he dearly loved. Sometime later, Degas came to dinner and left with the pastel under his arm, to spruce up a detail. Rouart never saw his painting again. Degas revised it to such an extent that it was ruined.
Degas always striving to attain the utmost precision of form, drafting and redrafting, canceling, advancing by endless recapitulation, never admitting that his work has reached its posthumous stage: so too Degas from sheet to sheet, tracing to tracing, he continually revises his drawing. He digs into it, squeezes and envelops it
Source:
Degas Invents a New World
Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty
an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, March 26–July 24, 2016
Catalog of the exhibition edited by Jodi Hauptman
Museum of Modern Art, 239 pp., $50.00
Museum of Modern Art, 239 pp., $50.00
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