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.