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Artist Quotes by Edgar Degas

48 Artist quotes by Edgar Degas

All Artist quotes Edgar Degas’s page

Edgar Degas says that the air in old‑master paintings is not the air we breathe, and he treats art as a kind of vice that must be pursued deliberately. He believes a painting should convey truth through imagined scenes and that every movement must be intentional, not accidental. He also notes that an artist often repeats a subject many times to reach mastery.

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I should like to be famous and unknown.

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Drawing is your understanding of form.

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Art is really a battle.

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The frame is the reward of the artist.

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“Art is vice. You don't wed it, you rape it.”

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I don't admit that a woman draws that well!

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One does not marry art. One ravishes it.

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

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Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

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Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.

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Taste! It doesn't exist. An artist makes beautiful things without being aware of it.

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Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.

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Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement

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Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

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Drawing is not the same as form, it is a way of seeing form.

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I put it (a still life of a pear, made by Manet, ed.) there (on the wall, next to Ingres' Jupiter, ed.),…

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I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall…

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the moods of sadness that come over anyone who takes up art... these dismal moods have very little compensation.

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It seems to me that today if the artist wishes to be serious... he must once more sink himself in solitude.

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

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No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.

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The frame is the pimp of painting; it enhances it, but it must never shine at the painting's expense.

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You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going…

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What use is my mind? Granted that it enables me to hail a bus and to pay my fare. But once I…

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Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one of them is paranoid and the other one is out to get him.…

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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…

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I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not…

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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…

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A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage,…

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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…

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The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak…

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It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for…

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The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see. Only when he no longer knows what…

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My art, what do you want to say about it? Do you think you can explain the merits of a picture to…

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We were created to look at one another, weren't we?

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The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

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An artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime.

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The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.

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Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

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

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More by Edgar Degas

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

The air we see in the paintings of the old masters is never the air we breathe.

Even in front of nature one must compose.

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

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

Instantaneity is photography.

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

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

I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, 'That's a pretty little thing,' after I had…

Great patience is called for on the hard path that I have entered on.

There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profits... All this traffic…

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

I should like to be famous and unknown.

Art is really a battle.

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