Dialogues with Degas demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Edgar Degas to 20th- and 21st-century ideas and art practices.

The first in-depth examination of this major artist’s impact on contemporary art, this book explores how contemporary practitioners have used Degas’s creativity as a springboard to engage imaginatively and critically with themes of colonialism, gender, race and class.

Through close analyses of paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, Brown shows how Degas's technical and compositional experiments have been extended or challenged in innovative ways by contemporary artists including: Frank Auerbach, Cecily Brown, Xinyi Cheng, Ryan Gander, Maggi Hambling, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Chantal Joffe, Leon Kossoff, R.B. Kitaj, Juan Muñoz, Paula Rego, Jenny Saville, Yinka Shonibare, Cy Twombly and Rebecca Warren.

Eschewing familiar conceptions of influence, the book opens transhistorical dialogues that generate new perspectives on histories of 19th-century art. These encounters also reframe contemporary art practices, prompt innovative ideas about the agency of visual artefacts, and offer a new methodology for writing about art. With such breadth of analysis, the book makes an important contribution to scholarship in Degas studies, contemporary art, reception theory, art history, and fine art.

Thoughtfully positioning the work of Edgar Degas in dialogue with that of certain contemporary artists, Brown compellingly reveals not just his ongoing relevance, but also the rich possibilities presented by an art history that is global, diverse, non-linear and inclusive. * MARNI KESSLER, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kress Foundation Department of Art History, University of Kansas, USA *
Kathryn Brown makes an adventurous charting of the cultural, social, and aesthetic loops and swoops of Degas’s art through the practices of leading contemporary artists. Dialogical and tantalisingly transversal in its sights and insights, vivid in its writing, this book is a major advance in art criticism. * SUSAN HARROW, Ashley Watkins Professor of French, University of Bristol, UK *
Exhilarating in her focus on women and ‘minority’ painters, Kathryn Brown recalibrates our understanding of Degas through the prism of modern art. Brown’s vivid analysis of post-WWII artists’ engagement with Degas – including Kitaj, Rego, Hambling, Xinyi Cheng and Twombly – explores the enduring impact of Degas’s provocative art. * ANTHEA CALLEN, Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture, and Professor Emeritus, The Australian National University, Australia *
Bringing Degas’ oeuvre thrillingly to life, this book demonstrates how, in grappling with his more problematic aspects, contemporary artists have added a whole range of complexities of their own. * REBECCA FORTNUM, Professor of Fine Art and Head of the School of Fine Art, The Glasgow School of Art, UK *
Moving beyond teleological models of influence, Brown sets the work of more recent artists in productive and reinterpretative dialogue with Degas and his work, thereby freeing each into new and persuasive interpretations. * Francesca Berry, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies, University of Birmingham, UK *

Kathryn Brown is Reader in Art Histories, Markets and Digital Heritage at Loughborough University, UK. Her books include Women Readers in French Painting 1870–1890 (2012), Matisse’s Poets: Critical Performance in the Artist’s Book (Bloomsbury, 2017) and Henri Matisse (2021). She is the series editor of Contextualizing Art Markets (Bloomsbury).