Event Host: Department of History of Art
Short Description: When Edgar Degas traveled across the sea to visit his Creole family in New Orleans in 1872, he expressed anxiety about his sight and the difficulty of painting the black persons so novel to him. The artist justified his decision not to depict this foreign place so pervaded by a boldly visible racial difference because of the brevity of his visit, though he said, “...there are some real treasures as regards drawing and colour in these forests of ebony.” This talk analyzes the intersection of sight, blindness, race and Creole identity in the writings and art of Degas in New Orleans and after his return to Paris.
When Edgar Degas traveled across the sea to visit his Creole family in New Orleans in 1872, he expressed anxiety about his sight and the difficulty of painting the black persons so novel to him. The artist justified his decision not to depict this foreign place so pervaded by a boldly visible racial difference because of the brevity of his visit, though he said, “...there are some real treasures as regards drawing and colour in these forests of ebony.” This talk analyzes the intersection of sight, blindness, race and Creole identity in the writings and art of Degas in New Orleans and after his return to Paris.
Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby is the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Arts and Humanities at University of California, Berkeley. She was born in the Panama Canal Zone and specializes in 18th- through early 20th-century French and American art and visual and material culture, particularly in relation to the politics of race, slavery and colonialism.
Free and open to the public.
