Degas Invents A New World
On the occasion of MOMA’s exhibition “Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty,” Anka Muhlstein writes: ‘Edgar Degas was a paradoxical man, disconcerting in both his actions and his appearance. “With his silk hat on his head, his blue spectacles over his eyes—not to forget the umbrella—he is the image of a notary, a bourgeois of the time of Louis-Philippe,†according to Paul Gauguin.1 A notary, really? Not to the eyes of Paul Valéry, who describes him opening the door of his atelier, “shuffling about in slippers, dressed like a pauper, his trousers hanging, never buttoned.‒
