Edgar Degas
Ξ August 13th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Old School Papers |
Edgar Degas was one of the greatest artists of the impressionist movement. The movement’s beginnings are attributed to Manet, while the name “Impressionism” was derived from Claude Monet’s “Impression: Sunrise”. The movement’s leaders included Manet, Monet, Suerat, Cassat, Renoir and Degas. The artists all knew each other, spending their days talking, drinking and painting together. However, Degas did not fit nicely into the Impressionist definition. His style was not that of short dabs and dashes in an attempt to capture light. Instead he was lumped with the Impressionists because they shared the same philosophy: to move artistic expression towards modernism. Contrary to his “fellow” impressionists, Degas had never really wanted to be completely detached from the past, and his artistic challenge was always to build a link between the “old” and the “new”. Out of the group, Degas was the strangest. His contemporaries labeled him as eccentric and bizarre and made no efforts to gain any sympathy either from strangers or his critics. (more…)