Looking into Degas: Uneasy Images of Women & Modern Life, University of California Press
In Looking into Degas Eunice Lipton illuminates the work of Edgar Degas, noted Impressionist painter and reputed misogynist. Lipton, a well known feminist art historian, unpredictably turns the accusation of misogyny on its head. She looks at Degas’s laundresses, milliners, ballet dancers and bathers, and far from seeing brutish, contorted females, she finds the robust, able, working-class women of 19th century Paris. Gorgeous hats, spinning ballerinas, chatty, imbibing ironers, spill over the edges of Degas’s paintings. With Looking into Degas Lipton produces a ground-breaking new view of the art of a wily, irritable, but not unsympathetic artist. As a result of this book, Degas’s paintings will never look the same.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT LOOKING INTO DEGAS
A fresh reshuffling of Degas’s work that is sure to open new areas of discourse.–Robert Rosenblum, New York University
Important and provocative. It points the way—with its supple and insightful methodology, its rich discoveries and its clear, unencumbered writing—to deeper and more comprehensive ways of looking at and thinking about art.–Jan Heller Levi, Artnews
In Looking into Degas, Eunice Lipton combines the methodology of social history with the insights of feminist analysis to produce a highly original and deeply felt new reading of one of the most interesting and unconventional artists of the 19th century.–Linda Nochlin, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art Emerita, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
Lipton supplies associations that time has stripped from Degas’ images…. Provocative and sensitive.–Christian Science Monitor
Lipton attempts to recreate the fabric of meaning…that Degas’ images carried in their own time and that are frequently lost to us today…. Provocative and lively.–Choice