Dialogues with Degas : Influence and Antagonism in Contemporary Art

Dialogues with Degas demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Edgar Degas to 20th- and 21st-century ideas and art practices. The first in-depth examination of this major artist’s impact on contemporary art, this book explores how contemporary practitioners have used Degas’s creativity as a springboard to engage imaginatively and critically with themes of colonialism, gender, race and class. Through close analyses of paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, Brown shows how Degas's technical and compositional experiments have been extended or challenged in innovative ways by contemporary artists including: Frank Auerbach, Cecily Brown, Xinyi Cheng, Ryan Gander, Maggi Hambling, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Chantal Joffe, Leon Kossoff, R.B. Kitaj, Juan Muñoz, Paula Rego, Jenny Saville, Yinka Shonibare, Cy Twombly and Rebecca Warren. Eschewing familiar conceptions of influence, the book opens transhistorical dialogues that generate new perspectives on histories of 19th-century art. These encounters also reframe contemporary art practices, prompt innovative ideas about the agency of visual artefacts, and offer a new methodology for writing about art. With such breadth of analysis, the book makes an important contribution to scholarship in Degas studies, contemporary art, reception theory, art history, and fine art.