- Hardcover: 310 pages
- Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (Sep 10 1991)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0226026957
- ISBN-13: 978-0226026954
- Product Dimensions: 2.6 x 1.9 x 0.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 862 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#1,129,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #31 in Books > Arts & Photography > Artists, A-Z > ( D-F ) > Degas, Edgar
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
In Odd Man Out, Carol Armstrong offers an important study of Edgar Degas's work and reputation. Armstrong grapples with contradictory portrayals of Degas as odd man out within the modernist canon: he was a realist whom realists rejected; he was a storyteller in pictures who did not satisfy novelist-critics; he painted modern life yet was no modernist; he belonged to the impressionist group yet was no impressionist. She confronts these and other contradictions by analyzing the critical vocabularies used to describe Degas's work.
By reading several groups of the artist's images through the lens of a sequence of critical texts, Armstrong shows how our critical and popular expectations of Degas are overturned and subverted. Each of these groups of images is matched to different interpretive moves, each highlighting distinct themes: economics and vocation; narrative and semiotics; gender and corporeality; and the author and self. Armstrong's provocative analysis celebrates the tantalizing qualities of the artist's elusive career: the pluralism of his work, its conflation of positivistic and negational tactics, the modern and the traditional, the abstract and the representational.
"A lucid and searching study. . . . Armstrong has produced one of the most elegant and persuasive examples of the historian's use of 19th-century art criticism. In the process, she has achieved a reading of the artist which makes a difference to the way we understand the difference of Degas himself."—Neil McWilliam, Times Higher Education Supplement
"This is a brilliant, original, and beautifully articulated study. Carol Armstrong's scholarship is impressive in its richness, ambition, and sophistication: Degas's works have rarely been given such detailed, penetrating, and suggestive readings as those offered in this book."—Linda Nochlin, Yale University
"With brilliant insight and incisive analytical intelligence, Carol Armstrong introduces new ways to conceptualize the structural ambiguities of Degas's work. Her subtle and probing readings clarify the fundamental contrariness of Degas's images—their disturbing negativity, their anti-modern modernism. Odd Man Out catapults the criticism of Degas from the hinterlands of traditional art history to the foreground of contemporary critical theory in both literature and the visual arts."—Charles Bernheimer, University of Pennsylvania
By reading several groups of the artist's images through the lens of a sequence of critical texts, Armstrong shows how our critical and popular expectations of Degas are overturned and subverted. Each of these groups of images is matched to different interpretive moves, each highlighting distinct themes: economics and vocation; narrative and semiotics; gender and corporeality; and the author and self. Armstrong's provocative analysis celebrates the tantalizing qualities of the artist's elusive career: the pluralism of his work, its conflation of positivistic and negational tactics, the modern and the traditional, the abstract and the representational.
"A lucid and searching study. . . . Armstrong has produced one of the most elegant and persuasive examples of the historian's use of 19th-century art criticism. In the process, she has achieved a reading of the artist which makes a difference to the way we understand the difference of Degas himself."—Neil McWilliam, Times Higher Education Supplement
"This is a brilliant, original, and beautifully articulated study. Carol Armstrong's scholarship is impressive in its richness, ambition, and sophistication: Degas's works have rarely been given such detailed, penetrating, and suggestive readings as those offered in this book."—Linda Nochlin, Yale University
"With brilliant insight and incisive analytical intelligence, Carol Armstrong introduces new ways to conceptualize the structural ambiguities of Degas's work. Her subtle and probing readings clarify the fundamental contrariness of Degas's images—their disturbing negativity, their anti-modern modernism. Odd Man Out catapults the criticism of Degas from the hinterlands of traditional art history to the foreground of contemporary critical theory in both literature and the visual arts."—Charles Bernheimer, University of Pennsylvania
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
In 1874, Degas charged himself with administering and advertising the first impressionist exhibition. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
In 1874, Degas charged himself with administering and advertising the first impressionist exhibition. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Odd Man Out: Readings on Degas,
By A Customer
This review is from: Odd Man Out: Readings of the Work and Reputation of Edgar Degas (Paperback)
This book is an excellent review of the work of Degas as well as of the writings of his critics. Degas appears as a discreet innovator that while maintaining structure and legibility, was undermining the foundations of older schools. Many paradoxes are described, such as the fact that Degas did not consider himself as an impressionist yet he participated in all but one of their exhibitions (while not doing landscapes as the others). Degas appears as quite an original character that could not be easily tagged. Unfortunately the book has 127 black and white images, only 4 in color and the paper is quite shiny so you need to be patient. Overall it is worth it. The book is also quite original in its approach.
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