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What is certain is that setting a piece of nature in place and drawing it are two very different things.
Edgar Degas
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Capturing nature in art involves a different process than simply placing it in a physical space.

Edgar Degas emphasizes the distinction between simply setting a scene from nature and the artistic process of interpreting and rendering it through drawing. This highlights the complexity of artistic expression, suggesting that the act of creating art requires deeper insight and skill than mere observation or arrangement of natural elements.

Themes

NatureArtDrawingExpressionInterpretation

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in an art class to discuss the differences between observation and artistic representation.

More from Edgar Degas

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.
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No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
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Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.
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It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.
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The Dance instills in you something that sets you apart. Something heroic and remote.
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You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.
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