Frasi di Edgar Degas

Hilaire German Edgar Degas /i'lɛʁ ʒɛʁ'mɑ̃ ɛd'gaʁ də'ga/ è stato un pittore e scultore francese.

La maggior parte delle opere di Degas possono essere attribuite al grande movimento dell'Impressionismo, nato in Francia negli anni sessanta del diciannovesimo secolo in reazione alla pittura accademica dell'epoca. Gli artisti che ne facevano parte come Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, stanchi di essere regolarmente rifiutati al Salone Ufficiale si erano riuniti in una società anonima per mostrare la loro arte al pubblico. In genere le caratteristiche principali dell'arte impressionista sono il nuovo uso della luce e i soggetti all'aperto. Gli impressionisti riuscirono a rivoluzionare la pittura, accorgendosi che l'occhio umano non riceve dalla realtà un'immagine dettagliata, ma un insieme di colori che poi la mente rielabora in forme distinte.

Così la prima impressione visiva divenne fondamento e scopo dell'impressionismo. Infatti questi artisti, lavoravano “en plein air” , ciò consentiva di riportare subito sulla tela la realtà visiva percepita. La tecnica pittorica consisteva in rapide pennellate di colore, non fissando i dettagli, ma dando un effetto cromatico – luminoso dell'insieme. Nella scelta dei temi prevalsero le situazioni in cui le vibrazioni luminose erano più percepibili perché accentuate dal movimento. Queste caratteristiche non sono sempre applicabili a Degas: anche se lui fu uno dei principali animatori delle mostre impressioniste, non trova un giusto posto nel movimento che asseriva la libertà di dipingere. Ai dipinti all'aperto egli preferiva «ciò che non si vede più nella memoria». Dirà un giorno a Pissarro: «Voi avete bisogno di una vita naturale; io di una fittizia.»

Anche se Degas fece parte ufficialmente degli impressionisti, non era però a loro unito per i tratti distintivi della pittura. La sua situazione d'eccezionalità non sfuggì ai critici di allora: anche se il suo modernismo imbarazzante veniva messo in evidenza, fu il meno controverso degli artisti francesi dell'epoca.

✵ 19. Luglio 1834 – 27. Settembre 1917
Edgar Degas photo
Edgar Degas: 73   frasi 4   Mi piace

Edgar Degas frasi celebri

“Hokusai non è solo un artista fra altri nel mondo fluttuante, è un'isola, un continente, da solo un mondo.”

Hokusai n'est pas seulement un artiste parmi d'autres dans le monde flottant, c'est une île, un continent, un monde a lui seul.
Origine: Da Terrasse, Dégas à travers ses mots, p. 42; citato in Gian Carlo Calza, Stile Giappone, Einaudi, Torino, 2002, p. 130. ISBN 8806161288

Edgar Degas: Frasi in inglese

“Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.”

posthumous quotes, The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas', (1961)

“Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it.”

posthumous quotes, The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas', (1961)

“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”

Quoted in Artists on Art: From the XIV to the XX Century, ed. Robert Goldwater (Pantheon, 1945)
quotes, undated

“I should like to be famous and unknown.”

Je voudrais être illustre et inconnu.
Degas said this to Henri Rouart, as cited by Antoine Terrasse, in Degas (Chartwell Books, 1982)
quotes, undated

“Apart from my heart, I feel everything grows old in me. Even my heart has something artificial. It has been sewn by the dancers in a soft, pink satin purse like their shoes.”

Quote in Degas' letter to the sculptor Paul-Albert Bartolomé, January 1886; as cited in 'Performing Fine Arts: Dance as a Source of Inspiration in Impressionism, by Johannis Tsoumas http://rupkatha.com/dance-in-impressionism/
1876 - 1895

“A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.”

quote from Georges Jeanniot, in Souvenirs sur Degas (Memories of Degas, 1933)
quotes, undated

“What a pity we allowed ourselves to be called Impressionists.”

Comme nous avons mal fait de nous laisser appeler Impressionistes.
Quoted by Walter Sickert in 'Post-Impressionists,' Fortnightly Review (January 1911)
1896 - 1917

“He [ Corot ] is always the strongest, he has foreseen everything.”

Degas in 1883, as quoted by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 2
Degas made this remark about Corot to Pissarro at the preview exhibition of the 'Jules Paton sale' in Paris, 24 April 1883 and overheard by Corot's biographer Alfred Robaut https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Robaut.
1876 - 1895

“[make drawings of] series of instruments and players; their shapes, twisting of the hands, arms and neck of the violinist; for example, puffing out and hollowing of the cheeks of bassoonists, oboists, etc..”

Quote from Degas' Notebook (undated); as quoted in Impressionism: A Centenary Exhibition, Anne Distel, Michel Hoog, Charles S. Moffett, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, N.Y.) 1975, pp. 81-82
quotes, undated

“I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.”

Quote of Degas, as cited by Walter Sickert, in 'Post-Impressionism and Cubism', Pall Mall Gazette (1914-03-11).
According to Sickert, Degas had said this quote to him in 1885
1876 - 1895

“There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.”

Quoted by Daniel Halévy, Degas Parle (1960) [My Friend Degas, trans. and ed. Mina Curtiss, Wesleyan University Press, 1964], p. 119
quotes, undated

“Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.”

posthumous quotes, The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas', (1961)

“A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.”

Une peinture, c'est d'abord un produit de l'imagination de l'artiste, ce ne doit jamais être une copie. Si, ensuite, on peut y ajouter deux ou trois accents de nature, evidemment ca ne fait pas de mal.
Quoted by Maurice Sérullaz, L'univers de Degas (H. Scrépel, 1979), p. 13
quotes, undated

“If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.”

"Some of Degas' Views on Art" (p. 56)
Degas hated to paint outdoor and even to see landscape-paintings, like for instance the 'draughty' ones of Monet
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

“.. women… …their way of observing, combining, sensing the way they dress. They compare a thousand of more visible things with one another than a man does.”

Quote from The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 53
quotes, undated

“I'm glad to say I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death.”

"Technical Details" (p. 70)
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

“I put it [a still life of a pear, made by Manet there [on the wall, next to Ingres' painting 'Jupiter'], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.”

remark in a conversation with the writer Moore, ca. 1875; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 117
1855 - 1875

“I always suspect an artist who is successful before he is dead.”

John Murray Gibbon, Pagan Love (1922), ch. xiv
Misattributed

“I will not admit that a woman can draw like that.”

Je n'admets pas qu'une femme puisse dessiner comme ca.
Quoted in Forbes Watson, Mary Cassatt (1932)
this quote is referring to some etchings by Cassatt, which Degas admired
quotes, undated

“You need the natural life; I, the artificial.”

À vous il faut la vie naturelle, à moi la vie factice.
Degas, quoted by George Moore, Impressions and Opinions (1891)
These words were spoken, Moore states, to 'a landscape painter'
1876 - 1895

“I remember a story my father used to tell. As he was coming home one day, he ran across a group of men who were firing on the troops from an ambush. During the excitement a daring onlooker went up to one of the snipers who seemed to be a poor marksman. He took the man's gun and brought down a soldier, then handed it back to its owner who motioned as if to say, 'No, go on. You're a better shot than I am.”

But the stranger said, 'No, I'm not interested in politics.'
Vollard, Degas and others were talking about the revolution of 1847. Somebody remarked to Degas that he must have been quite young at that time. Than Degas start to quote his father.
Origine: posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927), p. 40

“Draw all kind of everyday object placed, in such a way that they have in them the life of the man or woman – corsets that have just been removed, for example, and which retain the form of the body. Do a series in aquatint on mourning, different blacks – black veils of deep mourning floating on the face – black gloves – mourning carriages, undertaker’s vehicles – carriages like Venetian gondolas. On smoke – smoker’s smoke, pipes, cigarettes, cigars – smoke from locomotives, from tall factory chimneys, from steam boats, etc. On evening – infinite variety of subjects in cafes, different tones of glass robes reflected in the mirrors. On bakery, bread. Series of baker's boys, seen in the cellar itself or through the basement windows from the street – backs the colour of the pink flour – beautiful curves of dough – still-life's of different breads, large, oval, long, round, etc. Studies in color of the yellows, pinks, grays, whites of bread…… Neither monuments nor houses have ever been done from below, close up as they appear when you walk down the street. [a working note in which Degas planned series of views of modern Paris, the same time when he sketched the backstreet brothels, making graphic unflinching and even his realistic 'pornographic' sketches he called his 'glimpses through the keyhole', in which he also experimented with perspectives]”

Quote from Degas' Notebooks; Clarendon Press, Oxford 1976, nos 30 & 34 circa 1877; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 182
quotes, undated

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