Gagas for Degas

I learned so much over the weekend:

That it's not pronounced "DAY-gah" but "duh-GAH", because the painter was from an aristocratic family but favored the more modern spelling Degas rather than the traditional deGas.

That he also had family ties in Naples, studied and imitated the Italian Renaissance painters.

That he didn't see himself as an Impressionist or want to be considered one of them, with Manet, Monet, et al, didn't join in the general enthusiasm to get out of the studio to paint outdoors in the plen aire manner.

That he said, when walking past a painting by Monet, that he felt a draft.

That he wasn't crazy about all those dancers, wasn't a particular admirer of most of his women subjects, and was considered something of a misogynist. And when you look at the postures of some of the famous pictures of dancers, they're not all that flattering. And some of them are just a figure in the foreground of a landscape that's much more interesting. So that's what the exhibit was about - the landscapes.

A disclaimer is needed here. I like the museum, and I can get wrapped up in it, but I know nothing really. Other members of my immediate family know much more than the old man, but I do get into it. The rocks, hills, lakes, forest, mountains, and rivers figure prominently. Lots of downward vectors working across the plane of vision.

Gven's favorite was "The Return of the Herd" - animals moving resolutely through the streets of a village - which reminded me of a scene in the great Anthony Quinn movie "La Strada" where nothing much is happening except a huge horse walks past the camera. I especially liked the angular streets of the seaside town of Saint Valery where Degas liked to paint, the planar roofs of the houses at the foot of a hill, the way he left the sea out of the picture.

Then we went to a Greek restaurant in the Short North and ate appetizers, watched people go up and down High Street, listened to the loud laughing people in the back.