Degas and His Model


Book Description

There are many myths about the artist Edgar Degas—from Degas the misanthrope to Degas the deviant, to Degas the obsessive. But there is no single text that better stokes the fire than Degas and His Model, a short memoir published by Alice Michel, who purportedly modeled for Degas. Never before translated into English, the text’s original publication in Mercure de France in 1919, shortly after the artist’s death, has been treated as an important account of the master sculptor at work. We know that Alice was writing under a pseudonym, but who the real person behind this account was remains a mystery—to this day nothing is known about her. Yet, the descriptions seem too accurate to be ignored, the anecdotes too spot-on to discount; even the dialogue captures the artist’s tone and mannerisms. What is found in these pages is at times a woman’s flirtatious recollection of a bizarre “artistic type” and at others a moving attempt to connect with a great, often tragic man. The descriptions are limpid, unburdened; the dialogue is lively and intimate, not unlike reading the very best kind of gossip, with world-historical significance. Here in these dusty studios, Degas is alive, running hands over clay, complaining about his eyes, denigrating the other artists around him, and whispering salaciously to his model. And during his mood swings, we see reflected the model’s innocence and confusion, her pain at being misunderstood and finally rejected. It is an intimate portrait of a moment in a great artist’s life, a sort of Bildungsroman in which his model (whoever she may be) does not emerge unscathed.







Dancing with Degas


Book Description

Provides a simple introduction to French artist Edgar Degas and his pastel paintings of ballerinas.




Degas' Drawings


Book Description

Carefully reproduced from a rare 1923 limited edition, most of these magnificent drawings are unavailable elsewhere in published form. Dancers, nudes, portraits, travel scenes, and more. 100 drawings, including 8 in full color.




Degas


Book Description

"More than any other artist in the Impressionist group, Degas was fascinated by ideas and consciously based his work on them. "What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters," he once confessed, "of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament I know nothing." Yet his work has been understood very inadequately from that point of view. Publications on him, once dominated by memoirs inspired by his remarkable personality, are now concerned with cataloguing and studying limited aspects of his complex art. Its intellectual power and originality, which were evident to contemporary writers like Duranty and Valery, have not been studied sufficiently by more recent critics. It is this side of Degas's art--as seen in his ingenious pictorial strategies and technical innovations, his use of motifs like the window, the mirror, and the picture within the picture, his invention of striking, psychologically compelling compositions, and his creation of a sculptural idiom at once formal and vernacular--that is the subject of these essays. Inevitably, given the range of his intellectual interests, the essays are also concerned with his contacts with leading novelists and poets of his time and his efforts to illustrate or draw inspiration from their works. Throughout, the author makes use of an important, largely unpublished source, the material in Degas's notebooks, on which he has recently published a complete catalogue"--Publisher's description.




Edgar Degas: Paintings That Dance


Book Description

Edgar Degas is famous for his paintings of ballerinas, and that's what first attracts Kristin to his artwork. But as she studies him for her report, she discovers that his art ranged far beyond the ballet and she gradually learns exactly what makes Degas's work so unique.




Edgar Degas


Book Description

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was one of the outstanding draughtsmen of the 19th century: drawing was not only a central tenet of his art, but essential to his existence. Through an examination of the artist's drawings and pastels, Christopher Lloyd reveals the development of Degas's style as well the story of his life, including his complicated relationship with the Impressionists. Following a broadly chronological approach, the author discusses the various subject areas, not only the images of dancers (which form over half of Degas's total oeuvre) but also of nudes and milliners, and the less well-known racehorse and landscape drawings. He covers his whole career, from when Degas was copying the Old Masters to learn his craft to when he ceased work in 1912 because of failing eyesight, setting him within the artistic context of the period. Lloyd's extensive research, which includes consulting the artist's detailed notebooks, has resulted in a comprehensive exposition with, at its heart, some 250 pencil, black-chalk, pen-and-ink, and charcoal drawings and pastels of timeless appeal.




Degas by Himself


Book Description

DEGAS BY HIMSELF is a milestone in published approaches to the work of this remarkable figure. No other book has illustrated so many of Degas' works in colour, including his best-known paintings and sketches, as well as many works that will be unfamiliar to most people. The book draws on a range of sources - the artist's own notebooks and letters, as well as anecdotes and memoirs from his intimate circle - to trace a vivid portrait of Degas and reveal intimate aspects of his life and personality. His notebooks and letters show him as a forceful and expressive writer; there are letters to friends and customers, urgent messages to exhibitors at the Impressionist exhibition and, finally, a number of short and sad letters from his last years. Degas was also known as a wit and conversationalist, provoking a number of his friends to write down his words for posterity. For the first time, reminiscences and reported remarks have been brought together, conjuring up an unexpected picture of the artist as a man of wisdom and good humour.




Edgar Degas


Book Description

Edgar Degas was one of the great pioneers of modern art, and the J. Paul Getty and Norton Simon museums are fortunate to own jointly one of his finest pastels, Waiting (L'Attente), which he made sometime between 1880 and 1882, about midway in his career. In this fascinating monograph, author Richard Thomson explores this brilliant work in detail, revealing both the intricacies of its composition and the source of the emotional pull it immediately exerts upon the viewer. For Waiting is, indeed, an extraordinary object both in its craftsmanship and color and, perhaps most especially, in its aura of ambiguity and even mystery.




Color in the Age of Impressionism


Book Description

This study analyzes the impact of color-making technologies on the visual culture of nineteenth-century France, from the early commercialization of synthetic dyes to the Lumière brothers’ perfection of the autochrome color photography process. Focusing on Impressionist art, Laura Anne Kalba examines the importance of dyes produced in the second half of the nineteenth century to the vision of artists such as Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet. The proliferation of vibrant new colors in France during this time challenged popular understandings of realism, abstraction, and fantasy in the realms of fine art and popular culture. More than simply adding a touch of spectacle to everyday life, Kalba shows, these bright, varied colors came to define the development of a consumer culture increasingly based on the sensual appeal of color. Impressionism—emerging at a time when inexpensively produced color functioned as one of the principal means by and through which people understood modes of visual perception and signification—mirrored and mediated this change, shaping the ways in which people made sense of both modern life and modern art. Demonstrating the central importance of color history and technologies to the study of visuality, Color in the Age of Impressionism adds a dynamic new layer to our understanding of visual and material culture.