Talk: The Air of Modernity: Edgar Degas’ “Ironers,” Ecocritically
Speaker: Marni Kessler, Professor of Art History, University of Kansas, Kress Foundation Department of Art History
In over forty representations of ironers, Edgar Degas highlighted the difficulty of the women’s labors. He captured the effort required to smooth wrinkles, curve cuffs, and sharpen collars, and depicted the workers’ exhaustion, poignantly portraying some mid yawn and enervated. While considering these important aspects of Degas’s laundresses, this talk takes an ecocritical perspective that expands our understanding of them. Centering his surprising (and surprisingly vivid) evocation of the coal smoke emitted by the stoves that heated the irons, we come to see how Degas used richly layered pigments to foreground the unhealthy air that these women breathed, enabling us to encounter them, and the fullness of their humanity, anew. This talk made possible by the Harn Eminent Scholar Chair in Art History (HESCAH) program.
Stay after the talk for Art After Dark: Evening Hours. The museum is open until 9 pm. See other works by Degas on view in "French Moderns: Monet to Matisse, 1850 – 1950."
The Harn Eminent Scholar Chair in Art History (HESCAH) program invites distinguished scholars whose work represents a range of fields in the history of art. Established by a gift from Dr. David A. and Mary Ann Cofrin, this endowment funds lecture series and symposia featuring leading art historians, critics, curators and museum professionals. Free and open to the university community and beyond, HESCAH events are often presented in collaboration with other departments and centers on campus. Since 1993 the HESCAH program has offered opportunities to engage with scholars and thinkers on the cutting edge of current scholarship in art history.
image head: Edgar Degas, "Repasseuses (Ironers)," between 1884 and 1886, Oil on canvas, Bequest of Count Isaac de Camondo, 1911, © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski, image courtesy of the Musée d'Orsay
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