Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degaswas a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, although he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist. He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his renditions of dancers, racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable...
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth19 July 1834
CityParis, France
Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement
Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.
Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance.
Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.
If painting weren't so difficult, it wouldn't be fun.
No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.
Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.
Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?
And even this heart of mine has something artificial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink satin, pink satin slightly faded, like their dancing shoes.
You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.
It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.
It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.
I want to be famous but unknown!