Mapping Degas: Real Spaces, Symbolic Spaces and Invented Spaces in the Life and Work of Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
The New Art History and the Impressionist canon seem to have successfully claimed Edgar Degas as a misogynist, rabid nationalist and misanthrope whose art was both masterly and experimental. By analysing Degas’s approach to space and his self-fashioning attitude towards identity within the ambiguities of the political and artistic culture of nineteenth-century France, this book questions the characterisation of Degas as a right-wing Frenchman and artist, and will change the way in which Degas is thought about today.
Roberta Crisci-Richardson studied the history of art in Rome, and museology in Paris. She specialises in modern and contemporary French and Belgian art, and lectures in Visual Culture at Federation University Australia.
"Crisci-Richardson’s biography of Edgar Degas reflects many of the virtues and challenges of contemporary art historical scholarship. The book is full of exhaustive documentation that offers the reader a compendium of information about both Degas, and the social and political context of Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century; it also provides copious notes and a bibliography that would be an ideal starting place for anyone who is seriously interested in the time period or the artist. Tucked into this structure is some thoughtful insight and analysis."
Janet Whitmore Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, 15:3 (2016)
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