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Article: Edgar Degas crossed bridge to modernism // Artist stands apart from Impressionists
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- October 9, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright (null) Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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NEW YORK In 1881, Edgar Degas exhibited "The Little
Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer," his wax statue - complete with a real tutu
and hair - of a young ballerina. Most people found the piece too
shockingly real and the girl too relentlessly ugly. "Your opera `rat'
has something of the monkey, the Aztec, the mannequin about her," one
critic complained to Degas. "If she were smaller, one would be
tempted to shut her up in a specimen jar." Another critic claimed
that the sculpture belonged in a museum of zoology - not a museum of
art - and another suggested that it be moved to a place where samples
of human pathology were exhibited.
Still, for all the complaints lodged against the original of the ...