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Discover Degas and the Opera in Orsay Museum.

gerard van weyenbergh

One exhibition can hide another. Presented at the Musée d'Orsay on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of the Paris Opera, "Degas at the Opera" reveals the role of the stage in the evolution of the artist's style. The anecdote is told by the painter Jean-Louis Forain. He and Degas had been deprived of the posing sessions promised by a dancer, whom a wealthy "amateur" had delighted them. One evening, crossing this man at the Opera, Degas, pale with anger, said to him: "Sir, you have no right to take our tools from us!" " . The affair was serious, because Edgar Degas (1834-1917), great music lover, was not going to seek in the theater the simple delight. The Opera was the place where his art was revealed in its fullness; it was his "toolbox". The exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay demonstrates this brilliantly: far from being a simple repertoire of subjects for the "painter of dancers," the theater was the place of the most daring experiments, the laboratory of the work. Designed by Henri Loyrette, a great specialist and biographer of Degas, with Leïla Jarbouai and Marine Kisiel, curators at the Musée d'Orsay, and Kimberly Jones, curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the exhibition thus constitutes a magnificent key to reading of Degas' entire work. Connaissance des arts



art expert Degas
3 Danseuses by Degas, Photo National gallery of Art Washington

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