Degas In New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable [Hardcover]

Christopher Benfey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 1997

Edgar Degas traveled to New Orleans in 1872, arriving at a key moment in the cultural history of this most exotic of American cities: the decisive period of Reconstruction following the agony of the Civil War. What was it about this war-torn, diverse, and conflicted city that elicited from Degas some of his finest paintings? This fascinating book gives readers the answer. 16 photos.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

This lifeless account of Edgar Degas's 1872 visit to New Orleans unsuccessfully tries to link his artistic breakthrough with the city's Reconstruction-era social turmoil. Benfey (American Literature/Mt. Holyoke Coll.; The Double Life of Stephen Crane, 1992) claims the French painter's five-month sojourn with his mother's family ``is something of a legend in New Orleans.'' There's nothing legendary in Benfey's workaday account. A private man bent on being ``famous but unknown,'' Degas stayed indoors because his eyesight (which he fancied was failing) couldn't stand the intense southern light; he pined for black models but painted family members instead. Admitting the challenge posed by his ``notoriously secret'' subject, Benfey expands his critical field of vision to encompass New Orleans writers George Washington Cable and Kate Chopin--even though there's no evidence they crossed paths with Degas. Their work, obsessed with the enormous changes transforming New Orleans society in the Civil War's aftermath, is supposed to help us ``decipher the underlying meanings in Degas paintings and letters.'' Chopin gets top billing, but the largely forgotten Cable gets more ink, including a provocative but unsubstantiated suggestion that this creator of the archetypal ``tragic mulatto'' is the granddaddy of southern literature. Benfey, the first biographer to focus on Degas's American roots, adds valuable insight to the artist's work with his analysis of the effects American technology, architecture, and commerce had on his paintings. But Benfey's glosses of Chopin and Cable don't bring Degas into sharper focus; they push the enigmatic Frenchman further to the edges of an already sprawling, speculative biography. Conjecture about the psychological root of Degas's racial ambivalence--namely the possibility of black blood in the American side of the family--is overstated and underdocumented. Ambitious, perhaps, but Benfey's wide net nevertheless allows his primary subject to slip away, lost in a fog of lit-crit theory and psychobabble. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

When Benfey writes about Degas and his paintings in Degas in New Orleans, he seems to have his material firmly in grasp, but when he writes about the city's racial discord and literary history, his argument sometimes squishes out between his fingers. -- The New York Times Book Review, Robert Wilson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (November 11, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067943562X
• ISBN-13: 978-0679435624
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #476,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Historical and Social Commentary, February 11, 2001

By 

K. Walsh "Music Lover KAW" (Sacramento, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable (Paperback)

I learned alot about the life of some in a unique city in American history ..during that precarious time when slavery was ending and everyone was puzzling over how to deal with each other- black, white, mixed, rich, poor etc. I wasn't aware of the extent that some slaves intermingled on nearly equal footing or on the other hand were just plain raped by the upper echelon of society. Many of the slaves held power in their own way, and were the American aristocrat's closest friend and confidant. Light skinned blacks and the strange 'couplings'..fascinating. Also very informative about Degas and his life and his art. What a different book! Refreshing and thought provoking. I'm obviously not a reviewer..but I do read a lot and feel that I have pretty good judgement. Enjoy this one!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars New Orleans Jazz...., June 13, 2003

By 

Bruce Loveitt (Ogdensburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable (Paperback)

Maybe the most important thing for you to know about this book is that it isn't just, or even mostly, about Edgar Degas. If you're in the market solely for an art book about Degas, you may not like this book. What this book is really about is 19th century New Orleans. Degas' 1872-1873 trip is the main theme which the author has used as his framework. Mr. Benfey "improvises" on this theme and goes off in interesting directions. He talks about what made New Orleans unique- the early Creole settlers vs. the "Americans" that arrived after the Louisiana Purchase; the free black population (pre-Civil War) vs. the slaves who became free because of the war; the rupture caused by the war- as New Orleans was occupied by Federal forces through almost all of the conflict. (Many of the local women proved to be fairly feisty in showing their contempt for the Yankees. One woman in the French Quarter supposedly downloaded the contents of a chamber pot onto Admiral Farragut's head. On another occasion, the soldier in charge of keeping order, General Benjamin "Beast" Butler, was riding by some women and they all turned their backs to him. Butler remarked, "those women evidently know which end of them looks best.") After the Civil War the economy, based almost solely on King Cotton, took a beating in the Depression of the 1870's. Yankee "carpetbaggers" were despised. Liberals who wanted integration of the races did battle, sometimes literally, with reactionary forces who yearned for a return to the days of slavery. Mr. Benfey works in some analysis of the writers Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable, who were interested in some of the above themes. The author does devote a fairly good portion of the book to discussing Degas' "Louisiana Connection," (his mother was born in New Orleans; he had relatives who were involved in the cotton trade; and his younger brother, Rene, left France to try to make his fortune in New Orleans). If you enjoy Degas' art, you will find Mr. Benfey's musings on the portraits and "genre scenes" that Degas did during this period to be interesting and informative. For example, from a purely painterly standpoint, Degas enjoyed the juxtaposition of black and white skin, as well as the white of cotton against the black suits and hats commonly worn by businessmen of the time. Mr. Benfey also, convincingly, shows that Degas' started to use, in these paintings, certain compositional effects- such as slanted floors, the arrangement of figures in interior spaces, and certain hand and head movements- that would shortly reappear in the more famous "ballet paintings." We also see Degas in transition from his early "realistic" phase to a looser, more "Impressionistic" style of painting. I also found it interesting that Degas was fascinated by many things he saw while walking around New Orleans, but he was limited mostly to painting interior scenes because the light of New Orleans was bothering his eyes. (He started to have problems with his vision while serving in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. By the time of his death in 1917 he was nearly blind.) There was enough about Degas and his family and art in this book to satisfy me, plus I enjoyed Mr. Benfey's "improvisations." If, in addition to being a Degas fan, you have any interest in the antebellum and post-Civil War worlds of New Orleans, I think you will get a lot of enjoyment and intellectual stimulation from this book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, July 12, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable (Paperback)

This book is a wonderful history of Degas and his family. Anyone who loves art and enjoys history of any kind about New Orleans will like this book.