Quotes About Degas

Strange story about Degas. He hated women, didn't want to be with them. Yet he spent much of his life painting them. He had seen his father maltreat his mother, must have had a deep fear that he'd do the same thing.

A picture is an artificial work, outside nature. It calls for as much cunning as the commission of a crime.

In Degas's compositions with several dancers, their steps, postures and gestures often resemble the almost geometric, formal letters of an alphabet, whereas their bodies and heads are recalcitrant, sinuous and individual.

Manet also had an argument with Degas, the end result being that they each returned paintings that they had previous given to each other.

The first sight of Degas' pictures was the turning point of my artistic life.

His story was almost word for word the same as Caroline Sack's, and hearing it a second time made it plain how remarkable the achievement of the Impressionists really was. They were artistic geniuses. But they were also possessed of a rare wisdom about the world. They were capable of looking at what the rest of us thought of as a great advantage, and seeing it for what it really was. Monet, Degas, Cezanne, Renoir, and Pissarro would have gone to their second choice.

I really became convinced I wanted to tell the story of the real-life model for the Degas sculpture 'Little Dancer Aged 14,' which was unveiled in 1881, the Belle Epoque.

Among artists, Pissarro and Monet were Dreyfusard, Degas and Cézanne Anti.

Degas was obsessed by the art of classical ballet, because to him it said something about the human condition. He was not a balletomane looking for an alternative world to escape into. Dance offered him a display in which he could find, after much searching, certain human secrets.

Degas is one of the very few painters who have given the floor its true importance.

Degas, the most conservative of the group, was adamantly anti-Dreyfus and adamantly anti-Semitic as well.

Degas, who did not seem to have taken much personal interest in any of these girls except as models for his paintings, was endlessly interested in their lives, including the older men who hovered so possessively over them. These men, termed "lions," appear again and again in his paintings, sometimes adjusting a costume or sometimes simply watching. Degas