Description
Book SynopsisDialogues with Degas demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Edgar Degas to 20th- and 21st-century ideas and art practices.
The first in-depth examination of this major artist's impact on contemporary art, this book explores how contemporary practitioners have used Degas's creativity as a springboard to engage imaginatively and critically with themes of colonialism, gender, race and class. Individual chapters are devoted to dialogues between Degas's art and works produced by Frank Auerbach, Cecily Brown, Xinyi Cheng, Ryan Gander, Maggi Hambling, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Chantal Joffe, Leon Kossoff, R.B. Kitaj, Juan Muñoz, Paula Rego, Jenny Saville, Yinka Shonibare, Cy Twombly and Rebecca Warren.
Through close analyses of selected paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, Kathryn Brown explores how Degas's technical and compositional experiments have been extended or challenged in innovative ways. By experimenting with the materials and methods of exi
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Thoughtfully positioning the work of Edgar Degas in dialogue with that of certain contemporary artists, Brown compellingly reveals not just his ongoing relevance, but also the rich possibilities presented by an art history that is global, diverse, non-linear and inclusive. * MARNI KESSLER, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kress Foundation Department of Art History, University of Kansas, USA *
Kathryn Brown makes an adventurous charting of the cultural, social, and aesthetic loops and swoops of Degas’s art through the practices of leading contemporary artists. Dialogical and tantalisingly transversal in its sights and insights, vivid in its writing, this book is a major advance in art criticism. * SUSAN HARROW, Ashley Watkins Professor of French, University of Bristol, UK *
Exhilarating in her focus on women and ‘minority’ painters, Kathryn Brown recalibrates our understanding of Degas through the prism of modern art. Brown’s vivid analysis of post-WWII artists’ engagement with Degas – including Kitaj, Rego, Hambling, Xinyi Cheng and Twombly – explores the enduring impact of Degas’s provocative art. * ANTHEA CALLEN, Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture, and Professor Emeritus, The Australian National University, Australia *
Bringing Degas’ oeuvre thrillingly to life, this book demonstrates how, in grappling with his more problematic aspects, contemporary artists have added a whole range of complexities of their own. * REBECCA FORTNUM, Professor of Fine Art and Head of the School of Fine Art, The Glasgow School of Art, UK *
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements List of Colour Plates List of Figures Introduction Influence and Antagonism Art out of Time Structure and Approach 1. Degas and the School of London R. B. Kitaj and the Anxious Condition of Art Making The Anti-Dreyfusard Master Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach Draw Degas 2. Influence as Excess Misogyny Paula Rego’s Dog Women Cecily Brown: New Provocations 3. Vitrines, Vacancy, and Immanent Things: Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer Medicine and Moral Judgment: Damien Hirst Entangled Histories: Yinka Shonibare Ryan Gander’s Empathetic Storytelling 4. Degas Doubled Rebecca Warren as Twin Juan Muñoz and Miss La La’s Legacy 5. Pearl Divers: Prying Loose the Past Maggi Hambling’s Monotypes: Queer Phenomenology and the Gaze Chantal Joffe’s Bathers: Self and Other Xinyi Cheng: Modern Masculinities 6. The Final Act Jenny Saville: Colour Shock Howard Hodgkin’s Hero Conclusion Cy Twombly and Degas’s Hat Degas Unbound Notes Bibliography Index
