Edgar Degas Quotes
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In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.
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What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.
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You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do to-day. Otherwise, working is just a waste of time.
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Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.
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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.
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Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience; but these women of mine are honest, simple folk, unconcerned by any other interests than those involved in their physical condition. Here is another; she is washing her feet. It is as if you looked through a key-hole.
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We were created to look at one another, weren't we.
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Another Visitor: How did you manage, Monsieur Degas, when you painted that plein air called 'Le Plage', the one Monsieur Rouart has? Degas: It was quite simple. I spread my flannel vest on the floor of the studio, and had the model sit on it. You see, the air you breathe in a picture is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors.
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Art is vice. You don't marry it legitimately, you rape it.
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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..
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J'ai vraiment, un vrai bagage dans la tête. S'il y avait pour cela, comme il y a partout ici, des compagnies d'assurance, voilà un ballot je ferais assurer de suite.
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No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
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I believe Corot painted a tree better that any of us, but still I find him superior in his figures.
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A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.
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Poor Gauguin, 'way off there on his island! I'll wager he spends most of his time thinking of Rue Lafitte. I advised him to go to New Orleans, but he decided it was too civilized. He had to have people around him with flowers on their heads and rings in their noses before he could feel at home. Now if I should leave my house for more than two days...
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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.
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The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.
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One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.
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The study of nature is of no significance, for painting is a conventional art, and it is infinitely more worthwhile to learn to draw after w:Holbein.
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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.
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Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.
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Je n'admets pas qu'une femme puisse dessiner comme ca.
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Make portraits of people in familiar and typical positions, above all give their faces the same choice of expression one gives their bodies. Thus if laughter is typical for a person, make him laugh – there are, naturally, feelings that one cannot render…
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Oh! Women can never forgive me. They hate me, they can feel that I ‘m disarming them. I show them without their coquetry, in the states of animals cleaning themselves... ...I'm sure of it; they see me as the enemy. Fortunately, since if they did like me, that would be the end of me.