Degas Through His Own Eyes

by Michael F. Marmor
Somogy Editions D'Art, Paris, 2002
103 pp., illus. Trade, $35.00
ISBN: 2-85056-573-3.

Amy Ione
The Diatrope Institute
PO Box 12748
Berkeley  CA  94712-3748  USA

ione@diatrope.com

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834-1917) once said that that he was convinced that differences in vision are of no importance to the artist.  Rather, in his view, inner vision determined the nature of an artist's work.  This seems like an ironic statement when we consider the visual difficulties that plagued him throughout his life. Engaging with Degas actual visual situation, as Michael Marmor does in Degas Through His Own Eyes, allows us to think through Degas' case and to better place him in terms of his time.  As an Impressionist, it is easy to characterize the blurring and loosening of Degas' style in terms of cultural trends.  Marmor convincingly argues that to do so is to lose sight of the degree to which the individual and the cultural are complementary. In this case, considering the degree to which Degas' deteriorating ability to see the world around him influenced his conception of his work reminds us that the artist's eyes complement his inner vision.  Moreover, when we closely study Degas' situation it becomes clear that both the emergence of Impressionism and his subnormal acuity could account for the loosening of his style as his work matured.

Generally it is agreed that Degas had a condition called retinopathy. He first noticed poor vision in his right eye at the age of thirty-six, when he found he could not aim a rifle during the Franco-Prussian War.  We know that he realized this in the early 1870s from letters he wrote while in New Orleans, where he wrote about weakness in his eye and an inability to read and write.  Since there are no known measurements of Degas' acuity, Marmor uses four sources to make estimates:  historical records of correspondence, personal remembrances, the shading of lines in Degas' art, and Degas handwriting.  He also summarizes the key details of Degas' life in terms of his paintings and works on paper.  As he explains, the precision we encounter in Degas' early work is extraordinary, as is the roughness of many of his later pieces, which are often done in larger formats.  The quotations from his letters and friends were the most compelling evidence of the anomalous condition. 

Fully recognizing the degree to which a visual artist depends on visual analyses when constructing a work, Marmor aids us in connecting stylistic trends of Impressionism with Degas' physical capabilities.  His book is also a welcome addition to the literature connecting visual science with visual art.  It is not just that Marmor demonstrates intersections between art and science, he also shows a knack for finding ways to bring the reader into the discussion experientially makes Degas Through His Own Eyes more than a descriptive analysis.  For example, I was impressed by the selections he chose to first show us visual acuity in general and then to apply the computer simulated examples to Degas experience.  Reproduced examples of variations effectively transformed the words into a conceptual grasp of each point introduced.  Indeed, on closing the book I felt the visuals had allowed me to embody how his eyes deteriorated as he aged.  The visuals also convincingly made the point that Degas himself did not recognize the degree to which his deteriorating eyesight changed his work. 

What I liked most about the book was Marmor's highly original approach.  He effectively brings an ophthalmologist's eye to art, without losing sight of the degree to which an artist's creative process includes more than just the eyes.  We are reminded that cultural context, changing styles and visual acuity all influence an artist's oeuvre.  Marmor's ability to aid the reader in "seeing" how one might clinically assess Degas' visual disabilities in clinical terms is a distinctive contribution to the literature in this area.  The most useful chapter, "Seeing Art with Blurred Vision," simulates how Degas would have seen his own work as his eyes deteriorated over time.  Looking at his late work Marmor also gives a lucid account of how some of the features that appear bizarre to the viewer might have appeared appropriately conceived to the artist.  Here, too, the reproductions allow Marmor to clinically explain his analysis to the non-specialist. The illustrations of blur during the technical summary and when examining Degas work are a powerful component in the book.  His laying out how this artist's visual experience of the world.  Pages in which we are shown how a single image would look at 20/20, 20/60, 20/100 and 20/200 offer information that is hard to conceptualize without an image.  Equally compelling are comparisons of early and late pieces in which Degas uses similar motifs.  For example, Marmor compares lines and textures found in highly refined early images of dancers (The Dancing Lesson, 1871-1874; The Dance Foyer at the Opera on the Rue Le Peletier, 1872) with looser and more expressive later works (The Blue Dancers, 1890 and Russian Dancers, 1899).

Still, on finishing the book I felt I understood Degas' condition more than the pathos that no doubt accompanied the need to adjust to the pronounced physical changes. Nor does this survey does not encourage us to ask to what degree the artist might have been utilizing his failing vision toward artistic ends.  In addition, even though the visual loss was optical in nature, the book did not seem to encourage us to reflect on whether a sense of mist and aura might have also been something Degas wanted to capture in the paintings.

One valuable component Marmor does include is a summary of artists who had known visual disorders.  As the author explains, failing capabilities are not unique to Degas.  Other artists who are often mentioned when this topic is introduced include Rembrandt, Titian, Monet, and Còzanne. Monet, for example, had cataracts that significantly interfered with his work from 1920-1923.  It is said that his visual acuity had fallen to 20/200 at one point.  Yet after surgery, when his eyesight improved markedly, he reworked many of the canvases earlier years.  I was sorry that Marmor did not balance these examples with a paragraph or two on El Greco, whose elongated studies are no longer said to derive from astigmatism.

Exceptional as this book is, it is unfortunate that the author did not include a chapter on Degas' sculpture.  We not only know that his eyesight deteriorated as he matured, we also know that he turned increasingly to sculpture in his latter years.  Since it is well documented that tactile sensitivity increases with the loss of visual acuity, the book would have benefited from some discussion of this aspect of Degas working process. Touch was briefly mentioned in a Halòvy account of Degas but overall received little exposure throughout the text.  Also, in terms of process, it seems Degas' working relationship with photography should have been included.  His enthusiasm with the medium influenced his motifs, as the recent exhibition "The Artist and the Camera: Degas to Picasso" demonstrated.  Reading through the book I wondered if his photographic documents might offer some insight into how Degas coped with his failing vision.  Finally, I wish the book had included an index.

In summary, Degas Through His Own Eyes is a book that underscores that theories about art often underplay the degree to which a visual artist sees the work through his or her own eyes.  A thin book, filled with first-rate reproductions, this essay successfully conveys what Degas may have seen as he worked. To Marmor's credit, reproductions are scaled so that we are able to get a sense of size/scale relationships.  Non-specialists will find the book accessible.  Like Degas scholars, they will find much to ruminate on in each chapter.