Edgar Degas Quotes - Page 3

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• What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

  Edgar Degas

  Understanding, Charming, Conversation

  Edgar Degas (1948). “Letters”

  10 Copy quote

• Even in front of nature one must compose.

  Edgar Degas

  Composition, Fronts

  Edgar Degas, Rachel Barnes (1990). “Degas by Degas”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• Women can never forgive me; they hate me, they feel that I am disarming them. I show them without their coquetry.

  Edgar Degas

  Hate, Forgive Me, Forgiving

  Edgar Degas, Rachel Barnes (1990). “Degas by Degas”, Alfred A. Knopf

  9 Copy quote

• It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.

  Edgar Degas

  Battle, Details, Lines

  Robert Hale Ives Gammell, Edgar Degas (1961). “The shop-talk of Edgar Degas”

  5 Copy quote

• A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.

  Edgar Degas

  Artist, Men, Effort

  "Degas Danse Dessin" by Paul Valéry, translated by David Paul; Princeton University Press, (p. 84), 1989.

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• Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people's compliments and to put ourselves into their hands! What shame! Should we even accept that they talk about our work?

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Stupid, Thinking

  10 Copy quote

• One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Movement, Hundred

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Strong, Mean

  "The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas". Book edited by R. H. Ives Gammell, 1961.

  12 Copy quote

• A picture is first of all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy.

  Edgar Degas

  Artist, Imagination, Firsts

  "Degas".

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Edgar Degas

  Heart, Shoes, Dancing

  Nathalia Brodskaya, Edgar Degas (2012). “Edgar Degas”, p.125, Parkstone International

  29 Copy quote

• Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture.

  Edgar Degas

  Important, Realism, Sentiments

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• A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.

  Edgar Degas

  Vices, Knavery, Add

  Robert Hale Ives Gammell, Edgar Degas (1961). “The shop-talk of Edgar Degas”

  9 Copy quote

• Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.

  Edgar Degas

  Long, Has Beens, Finished

  Edgar Degas, Jean Sutherland Boggs (1988). “Degas [exposition]”, p.222, Metropolitan Museum of Art

  11 Copy quote

• There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.

  Edgar Degas

  Success, Panic, Kind

  "Degas Parle (My Friend Degas)". Book by Daniel Halevy translated and edited by Mina Curtiss (p. 119), 1964.

  8 Copy quote

• Drawing is your understanding of form.

  Edgar Degas

  Drawing, Understanding, Form

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• I put it [picture "A still life of a pear" by Edouard Manet] there [on the wall, next to the picture "Jupiter and Thetis" by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.

  Edgar Degas

  Wall, Artist, Jupiter

  Edgar Degas' remark in a conversation with the writer Moore (circa 1875), as quoted in Sue Roe "The Private Lives of the Impressionists" (p. 117), 2006.

  6 Copy quote

• In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

  Edgar Degas

  Mean, Ideas, Giving

  "The Royal Academy". Walter Sickert, English Review, June 1912.

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• One must have a high opinion of a work of art - not the work one is creating at the moment, but of that which one desires to achieve one day. Without this it is not worthwhile working.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Future, Creating

  Edgar Degas (1995). “Edgar Degas: Paintings”

  14 Copy quote

• Art is really a battle.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Battle, Art Is

  8 Copy quote

• What is certain is that setting a piece of nature in place and drawing it are two very different things.

  Edgar Degas

  Two, Drawing, Different

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

  Edgar Degas

  Work Out, Deception, Crime

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• I felt so insufficiently equipped, so unprepared, so weak, and at the same time it seemed to me that my reflections on art were correct. I quarreled with all the world and with myself.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Reflection, Doubt

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• I would like to be famous but unknown.

  Edgar Degas

  Fame

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• There are some women who should barely be spoken to; they should only be caressed.

  Edgar Degas

  Women, Should

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• The air you breathe in a picture is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors.

  Edgar Degas

  Air, Doors, Breathe

  "Degas: An Intimate Portrait" by Ambroise Vollard, translated by Randolph T. Weaver. Dover, (p. 47), 1986.

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