Volume 43, Number 7 · April 18, 1996
Degas & Women
By Robert L. Herbert
The Spectacular Body: Science, Method and Meaning in the Work of Degas
by Anthea Callen
Yale University Press, 244 pp., $50.00
Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era
by Hollis Clayson
Yale University Press (out of print)
Odd Man Out: Readings of the Work and Reputation of Edgar Degas
by Carol Armstrong
University of Chicago Press, 299 pp., $46.00
At first glance, Degas's representation of prostitutes and women bathing might seem poor candidates for the admiration of art historians and critics who are women. Women, moreover, will take little pleasure in his aphorisms, for example: 'Art is a vice; one does not marry it legitimately, one rapes it.'[1] Yet over the past decade many women have paid special attention to his nudes in articles, catalogs, and books. Among them, and writing as feminists, are Carol Armstrong, Norma Broude, Anthea Callen, Hollis Clayson, Heather Dawkins, Wendy Lesser, Eunice Lipton, and Griselda Pollock. Armstrong, Broude, Lesser, and Lipton conclude that Degas did not exhibit the customary male dominance and instead created images of women who are involved with their own bodies without regard for a male viewer. Broude goes so far as to consider Degas a protofeminist. Of course there is no one woman's or feminist's outlook. Callen, Clayson, and Dawkins take the opposing point of view, arguing that Degas embodied the dominant masculinity of his era.[2]
Review, 3217 words
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