Edgar Degas (19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917)
Edgar Degas- Self Portrait
I spent a good many years as an art student obsessed with the work of Degas. I think what I recognized even then was just how important Degas was to the development of figurative art. He was truly the key transitional figure... the lynch-pin between the figure paintings of the old masters:
-Giorgione- Dresden "Venus"
-Sir Peter Paul Rubens- The Three Muses
-Boucher- Mademoiselle O'Murphy
-Delacroix- The Death of Sardanapolis
-Ingres- Portrait of Princesse de Broglie
...and figure painting as it evolved in the hands of the Modernists:
-Gauguin- Spirits of the Dead Watching
-Edouard Vuillard- Interior with Work Table
-Picasso- Family of Saltimbanques
Degas was also the key figure in my coming to terms with the daring and at times confusing innovations of the Modernists.
At the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classic art. He spent endless hours at the Louvre studying and copying the "old masters". His idols included Raphael, Titian, Veronese, and Ingres. His efforts at portraiture were marvelous... among the finest of the 19th century:
-Portrait of Estelle Musson, the artist's blind Cousin
-Portrait of a Woman on the Balcony (Estelle Musson)
In his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life.
The secret is to follow the advice the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them.-Degas
-Portrait of a Young Woman
-Portrait of the Painter Tissot
-Portrait of Henri Michel Levy
-Portrait of Victoria Duborg
-Portrait of the Bellelli Family
-Portrait of Giovannina Belleli
In spite of Degas' mastery of portraiture, the artist struggled with "History Painting". History Paintings... invented multi-figural narrative compositions... were deemed to be the pinnacle or highest possible achievements within the hierarchy of painting. Michelangelo, Botticelli, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Boucher, Watteau... nearly all of the greatest painters of history had mastered the great narrative paintings. Degas sought to prove himself within this "highest" genre of painting.
The artist followed the traditional approach to creating a grand multi-figural painting. He chose narratives based upon what were surely edifying Greek, Roman, and Medieval themes. He made dozens... hundreds of studies from life... and endless compositional studies:
-The Spartan Girls Challenging the Spartan Boys
The end result, however, fell short of the artist's aspirations... and seemed somehow forced. One suspects that an artist as astute as Degas rapidly recognized that there was something overly artificial... mannered... and out of place about attempting grand narrative paintings based upon Greco-Roman and Biblical themes in the manner of the old masters undertaken by an artist living in Paris... the most modern and advanced city in Europe. On more than one occasion Degas had argued that one must learn from the old masters... yet not mimic them. It must have struck him that there was something absurd in spending his days in his Parisian studio painting Spartan Boys & Girls in the manner of Raphael or Rubens... and his evenings strolling the streets of Paris, carousing the bars and cabarets and admiring the unnatural colors of the gas lights; frequenting the opera, the ballet, and the brothels with all their modern artifice.
As a result... Degas abruptly changed course, bringing the traditional methods and skills of a history painter to bear upon contemporary subject matter, becoming essentially a classical "realist" painter of the modern life. The change in his art was influenced primarily by the example of Edouard Manet, whom Degas had met in 1864... reportedly while both were copying the same Velazquez portrait in the Louvre.
Upon the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Degas enlisted in the National Guard, where his defense of Paris left him little time for painting. During rifle training his eyesight was found to be defective, and for the rest of his life his eye problems were a constant worry to him.
After the war, in 1872, Degas began an extended stay in New Orleans, Louisiana, where his brother René and a number of other relatives lived. Staying at the home of his Creole uncle, Michel Musson, Degas produced a number of works, many depicting family members.
Degas returned to Paris in 1873, and his father died the following year, whereupon Degas learned that his brother René had amassed enormous business debts. To preserve his family's reputation, Degas sold his house and an art collection he had inherited, and used the money to pay off his brother's debts. Dependent for the first time in his life on sales of his artwork for income, he produced much of his greatest work during the decade beginning in 1874.
The Cotton Exchange in New Orleans
A number of Degas' early portraits exhibit the psychological insight and tension that would exemplify his finest "realist" narrative paintings. The portrait of Tissot, for example, suggests a certain unsettling element as the burly artist scowls at us while a collapsed female figure (actually a manikin) lies sprawled upon the floor... the red ribbon of her hat and her twisted head almost suggesting that her throat had been slashed Jack the Ripper. The Portrait of the Bellelli Family, on the other hand, conveys a definite air of tension or unease between the wife, who pulls her daughters to her, and the husband sitting to one side... as if shunned and left outside the family circle.
The painting, Le Viol (The Rape) may be the most successful of Degas' works of the period. In many ways it echoes the sort of psycho-sexual dramas of the literature of the period (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Zola, etc...)
This painting presents an image of a couple in a darkened bedroom. They are separated by the bed and a velvet-lined box that glows with an erotic pink. The woman has collapsed upon a chair... distraught... with her back to the man. He stands rigid, hands in pocket, a ghostly shadow suggestive of Edvard Munch hovering above him. One might also think of Munch with regard to the tilted perspective that creates an unsettling, rushing sensation. The narrative is left open-ended. Are we witness, after the fact, to an actual rape? Is this a scene of a poor young girl fallen into prostitution... the profession chosen by many poor young Parisian girls of the era who lacked any other means of support. Is it the wedding night of an unequal couple... perhaps an arranged marriage of an innocent, naive young girl and an older, experienced man? Or is it something else altogether?
Disenchanted with the art exhibitions of the official Salon, Degas eventually joined a group of young artists who were organizing an independent exhibiting society. The group soon became known as the Impressionists. Between 1874 and 1886, they mounted eight art shows, known as the Impressionist Exhibitions. Degas took a leading role in organizing the exhibitions, and showed his work in all but one of them, despite his persistent conflicts with others in the group. Degas insisted on the inclusion of artists who were most certainly not "Impressionists", and he had little in common with Claude Monet and the other landscape painters in the group, whom he mocked for painting outdoors.
"If I were in the government I would have a brigade of policemen assigned to keeping an eye on people who paint landscapes outdoors. Oh, I wouldn't want anyone killed. I'd be satisfied with just a little buckshot to begin with." -Degas
"I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to
the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They
thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour." -Degas
In spite of his protests, Degas' work began to exhibit elements that were clearly the result of his contact with the Impressionists. His paintings took on a lighter palette... and he began to employ a more fluid, "Impressionistic" brushwork... he even began to explore outdoor themes:
The artist would later suggest that the horse races offered a real-world subject matter which captured a similar motion of human and animal bodies as one found in the ancient Greek friezes.
Around this time, the artist began to explore the medium of pastel in an ever-increasing depth. Up until this time, Pastel has been employed by few major artists outside of sketches... and in most instances it was used in portraiture and stressed a soft, delicate, hazy technique and "pastel" coloring:
-Francois Boucher- Portrait of Gustave Lunberg
Degas applied the dry pigment in a far more audacious and gestural manner stressing the individual marks and building the "paintings" up in complex layers and textures. Pastel enabled him more easily to reconcile his facility for line and love of drawing, with his growing interest in expressive color. The medium allowed the artist to straddle the line between "drawing" and "painting":
"Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality."- Degas
Beginning in the 1870s and continuing for years after, Degas focused upon a limited number of themes. Not only had his dark palette that spoke of the influence of Dutch painting given way to the use of vivid colors and bold brushstrokes, but his imagery was increasingly centered upon the observation of contemporary life.
In the mid-1870s Degas began to explore the print media of etching, monoprint, and lithography. At first he was guided in this by his old friend, Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic as well as the examples of Rembrandt. Many of these prints focused upon the theme of the Parisian brothels. Lurid details were often hidden among the smoldering darks of the print ink, recalling the rich chiaroscuro of Rembrandt:
Monoprint inspired Degas to be more open to allowing for conspicuously unfinished passages and gestural brushwork.
“Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn’t painting be too?”
- Edgar Degas
The artist was a fascinated by the possibilities of exploring multiple variations upon the same afforded by the print medium, and he frequently reworked the same print repeatedly with pastel employing different approaches to color. Years later, he would explore similar possibilities working with photographic references.
Degas' brothel prints would be a major inspiration upon the work of Toulouse-Latrec...
Unfortunately, Degas' brothel scenes, as well as his later paintings and pastels of bathers have led some critics and art historians to assume that the artist was a misogynist. The fact that he never married is also brought to play in this theory. Degas was certainly a curmudgeon... maybe even a misanthrope... but he also had close relationship with a number of women... he wrote a recommendation for at least one ballerina, organized an auction of artworks for the widow of his long-time, trusted friend and art-critic, Edmond Duranty... and acted as mentor and champion for at least two female artists: Mary Cassat and Suzanne Valadon.
Mary Cassatt was a highly educated, sophisticated, and wealthy society woman... as well as a determined artist. She moved with her parents and sister from Pittsburgh to Paris in 1873. Shortly thereafter, she saw Degas’ work in Durand-Ruel’s gallery window. She would later declare:
"I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his Art. It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it.”
They met in 1877 through a mutual friend, M. Tourny, but both were aware of each other’s work before then. He had seen her work at the Salon and commented: “There is someone who feels as I do.”
Cassat was quite likely the woman most beloved by Degas during his lifetime. He would declare years after she had moved back to America, "I might have married her."
Cassatt persuaded her friend from Philadelphia, Louise Elder, to purchase a Degas pastel print. That friend eventually married industrialist, Henry Osborne Havemeyer, and acquired the largest Degas collection outside of Degas’ own.
At first, Cassatt was referred to as his pupil, but quickly moved out of that category. He was always glad to help her solve a printmaking problem or an art project. They exchanged images often. They spent a lot of time together. They would visit the Louvre together...
-Mary Cassat at the Louvre
-Mary Cassat at the Louvre (etching/monoprint)
-Mary Cassatt at the Louvre (etching/pastel)
Cassatt would take Degas along when she went shopping for clothes and hats. Degas always enjoyed watching young women; and the shopping trips were an excuse for watching sales-clerks as they moved, presented a dress, used their hands, created complex gestures necessary for trying on hats, every movement. Degas spoke of planning a treatise upon planning a treatise upon the manner in which women…observe every detail and nuance of dress and ornament comparing "a thousand of more visible things with one another than a man does." These characteristics, the artist thought, might surely lead women to eventually surpass men as artists.
Degas' excursions with Cassatt to the Milliner's resulted in a body of his finest paintings/pastels:
Degas' use of strange angles or points-of-view, odd croppings, and tilted perspective were inspired by the artist's exposure to Japanese prints and snapshot photographs.
Another major theme within Degas' oeuvre was that of the Parisian nightlife: bars, nightclubs, theaters, cabaret, etc...
-At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs
-Cafe Concert at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs
- Miss La La and The Cirque Fernando
Degas' focus upon the the Parisian nightlife was quite likely inspired by the example of the work of his close friend, Edouard Manet:
Degas again employed dramatic and shockingly original and even odd viewpoints and perspectives. His use of increasingly brilliant and artificial color was undoubtedly the result of the artist's observation of the unnatural effects of colored stage lights and gaslights. In these paintings, we often find ourselves as an intimate participant... sitting in the audience, looking up or down at the stage and over the orchestral pit, across the tables, or viewing the scene as if from back stage. Again, Degas' work in this genre would prove highly influential... inspiring artists such as Toulouse-Latrec:
Degas' largest and perhaps most important body of work is most certainly his ballerinas. It is the subject matter most associated with the artist. Degas regularly attended the ballet and the opera. Just as the artist was a keen observer of the movements and gestures and every slight nuance of clothing and ornament of the women and young girls in the Milliner's shops, so he was even more fascinated with the motion and agility of the ballerinas, their beautiful costumes, and the almost ethereal nature they assumed under the colored stage lights. The ballet was a world of exquisite artifice perfectly suited to the tastes of an artist like Degas. He would later declare:
"They call me the painter of dancers. They don't understand that the dancer has been for me a pretext for painting pretty fabrics and for rendering movement."
For 10 years Degas sketched the young ballerinas training and then reused the sketches for new artworks during the next 40 years. The earliest of his ballerina paintings tend to be populated with a number of small figures and painted in a "tonal" manner employing a limited palette of mostly earth tones. These paintings are clearly the result of the artist's striving to master the multi-figural narrative painting of his artistic idols within the context of the modern world.
With time, the artist gained the trust of various ballerinas, their teachers, and even their parents. He began to move in closer... focusing upon the motions of a smaller group of dancers or even a single dancer. Rather than focusing upon the finished ballet, Degas was drawn to the artifice of stage sets, the view of ballerinas waiting in the wings backstage, the strenuous and repetitive physical labor, and even the boredom and exhaustion:
Having access to the intimate backstage comings and goings of the ballet, Degas was aware of socio-economic realities of the dancers. The girls often practiced to the point of exhaustion due to the cut-throat competition. For the poor Parisienne, the theater often offered one of the few alternatives to a life of drudgery as a washerwoman... or worse yet, the shame and derogation of prostitution. Even so, a good number of the girls fell into a form of prostitution as mistresses to wealthy "patrons" of the ballet. These well-to-do "patrons" would offer financial support to their "favorites", and these girls... selected more for their looks and sexual availability... would often be awarded choice roles. Degas painted a number of scenes which explore this sexual/economic drama:
In the above painting, we see a young ballerina standing backstage next to her "patron". Her back turned to him, her arms are folded in resignation and forfeit.
In this pastel one can almost sense the lust of her elderly patron as he stares at his "prize" in her glittering and diaphanous costume.
In two more dynamic pastels, Degas presents us with an intimate... even voyeuristic view... as if we ourselves are one of the ballerinas patrons allowed a view into her private dressing room.
In the first painting we see a confident prima ballerina admiring herself in the mirror as one of the costume women makes last second adjustments. Behind her... almost hidden, a bespectacled patron looks on admiringly.
In the second painting, the ballerina glows magically from the light thrown off from the lamps before her mirror. The floor is strewn with clothes... her undergarments... reinforcing the sexual nature of the image... and the artifice of the ballet.
For all the brilliance and unquestionable beauty of Degas' earlier ballerina drawings/paintings, his later works rise to a level of unrivaled splendor, audaciousness, and formal innovation. The artist zoomed in ever closer... focusing upon the "movement" to be found within a small group of figures... or a single figure. In many ways, as the artist focused upon the twisting and turning and the musculature of his little Parisian dancers, they take on an almost "monumental" nature... (in spite of the small scale of the works)... not unlike the figures in Michelangelo's Sistine:
Degas also began to explore ever more the potential of color. He began to employ various colored papers in a manner not unlike the colored grounds utilized by the Venetian paintings as a means of unifying the painting as a whole while lending a greater "sparkle" to the bright impasto passages layered over the darker ground.
At the same time, Degas' pastels began to take on an increasingly textured nature. The artist slowly moved away from a more polished surface and began to allow layer upon layer of loose marks to remain. Degas’s use of fixative was the key to the appearance of his many-layered pastel works. Fixative made it possible for pastel to adhere to paper without smearing or smudging and enabled the artist to continue to work over pastel that has already been applied. Degas searched for a fixative that would not alter the matte, velvety quality of his pastels. Degas used a secret formula for fixative given to him by artist Luigi Chialiva that has not been duplicated today. By using fixative to prevent blending and smudging, Degas created a roughened surface to which each layer of pastel adhered easily. The fixative applied at different layers of the composition enabled Degas to create a work using multiple layers of pastel, which achieved an astonishing complexity of superimposed color.
Degas also experimented with the pastels themselves. The artist sought out various pastel-makers in order to find pastels which responded well to fixatives while retaining their original color, and allowed for repeated layers. He would also soak the pastels in water, alcohol, or various painting media or steam them until they took on an incredible soft, buttery nature close to oil paint.
Many of these pastels have an appearance that almost suggests the battered and weathered surfaces of antique fresco paintings.
The innovations and discoveries that Degas made in his pastels, carried over to his paintings... where he often employed hatches, dabs, and even fingerprints in a manner reminiscent of his pastels:
In many instances... such as this absolutely ravishing painting of ballerinas in full costume back stage... Degas employed a combination of both paint and pastel.
In 1881, Degas exhibited a sculpture of a young student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school named Marie van Goethem:
The sculpture was two-thirds life-size and was originally sculpted in wax, an unusual choice of medium for the time. It was dressed in a real bodice, tutu and ballet slippers with a wig of real hair. All but a hair ribbon and the tutu were covered in wax. The extreme naturalism of the work recalls Baroque Spanish sculpture:
When the La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans was shown in Paris at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881, it received mixed reviews. The majority of critics were shocked by the piece. They compared the dancer to a monkey and an Aztec and referred to her as a "flower of precocious depravity," with a face "marked by the hateful promise of every vice" and "bearing the signs of a profoundly heinous character."
In spite of these critical comments, it is clear that Degas... a master painter... and almost certainly the greatest master of pastel ever... also created, in one fell swoop, what was likely the single most audacious and innovative sculpture of the 19th century.
Degas continued to explore sculpture as a medium... increasingly so as his eyesight began to fail him in his final years. Yet it comes as no surprise... considering the uncomprehending and disparaging critical commentary... that Degas never public exhibited these works.
The majority of Degas sculpture were small wax nudes, often based upon dance poses... but later related to his series of pastels and paintings of bathers... although he also produced a number of sculpture of horses. The artist may not have ever intended these to be exhibited or seen as finished works of art, but rather as sketches allowing him to envision the human figure seen from a variety of points-of-view.
The last major theme or subject matter of Degas' career was that of the female nude or "bathers". In part these paintings, which increasingly focused upon the single nude figure, must have been an outgrowth of the artist's experience with sculpture. At the same time, they are the result of the older artist's increasing isolation from society and his gradual loss of sight.
Degas earlier work was all rooted in drawing from real life settings: the racetrack, milliners, opera, ballet, cabaret, nightclubs, and cafes. These endless drawings from life were then employed in creating his finished drawings in the studio. In his later years, the artist had little by way of a social life. The majority of his days were spent in the studio... working with hired models.
Degas' "bathers" employed the same innovations in color, composition, and layered mark-making as did his later ballerinas. As he had done throughout the majority of his career, Degas' utilized his mastery of artifice to create images that revealed an uncompromising honesty... realism... naturalism.
In spite of spending his days in the artificial experience of drawing from a naked life model in an artist's studio, Degas wholly rejected the artifice and idealization of the nudes common to the artists of the French Academy:
Degas, rather, chose to focus upon the "reality" of the female nude... as she might be seen in the modern world. His women were seen engaged in their daily private rituals of bathing and dressing.
Degas' bathers build upon the tradition of intimism... an approach to art in which the focus is upon private domestic (and often erotic) "dramas" of everyday life. This tradition dates back to the Dutch Baroque painters...
... and continues on through the Rococo...
Like these examples of intimism Degas' paintings of bathers reject the idea of a staged scene and the presumption of an audience that the individuals in the painting are aware of.
Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience. But my women are simple, honest creatures who are concerned with nothing beyond their physical occupations... it is as if you were looking through a keyhole.- Degas
Degas' naked women go about their daily rituals of bathing without the least concern for decorum or how unappealing they might look in the process.
Little of this goes toward explaining just why these paintings were thought by many of Degas' peers to be so shocking... crude... vulgar. To understand such negative criticism, we must look at the realities concerning sexuality and decorum of the era.
It was not the un-idealistic manner in which Degas rendered the nude female form, nor his audacious formal innovations which led to the outraged criticism of Degas' "bathers"... although these elements certainly contributed to the outrage. Rather, it was the fact that Degas had, in the eyes of his critics, broken a certain hypocritical silence or decorum.
At this period in history, husbands and wives of the upper classes tended to almost live in separate worlds. In a great many instances they would have separate bedrooms. It would be rare for a husband to see his wife wholly nude, let alone engaged in bathing and dressing. As a result, it was assumed that Degas' bathers represented girls from the vulgar lower classes... or prostitutes.
The existence of brothels and the fact that these were quite often frequented by the most well-respected (and often married) men was common knowledge... but something that was not to be spoken of. When Manet dared to broach the topic with his Olympia...
... or Flaubert and Zola in their writings... many of these "well respected" husbands were outraged.
In reality, Degas' women were but artist's models... although undoubtedly some of them engaged in prostitution as well, as a means of at a time when their were few "career" possibilities open to women. Even so, Degas quoted in a discussion with one of his favorite models seems to make it clear that there was nothing sexual in the process of working with the naked model:
But it's true, isn't it Pauline, that people imagine that the artists and their models spend their time getting up to all sorts of obscenities? As far as work goes, well, they paint or sculpt when they are tired of enjoying themselves.
Degas transformed the artifice of the naked model posing for hours on end before the artist in his studio into the illusion of private domestic interiors scenes in which women were seen engaging in the every-day act of bathing and dressing.
The repetitive theme and variation of women bathing reinforced the assumption that the women in question were prostitutes... that what Degas was presenting were brothel scenes once again... like his earlier monoprints which were known only to a small circle of friends and art connoisseurs. After all, only prostitutes were expected to engage continually in the act of bathing... between "clients." Some "clients" even paid to watch the girls bathe... dress and undress:
Nevertheless... there is nothing that suggests that Degas intended his "bathers" to represent anything more than women in their private domestic settings going about their daily grooming.
The fact that Degas' bathers are frequently accompanied by well-dressed maids greatly undermines the notion that what we are privy to are images of prostitutes in the brothels. Renoir was quoted as having stated that the most basic themes were eternal; the naked woman rising from her bath is Venus rising from the sea, and one can imagine no subject more worthy of art. Degas' habit of building upon archetypes from art history... especially classical Greece and Rome... suggest he was of a similar train of thought.
Degas' "Bathers" and their intimate settings would go on to serve as an archetype and a source of inspiration for later artists including:
...on into the later 20th century in the work of artists such as:
Elmer Bischoff and the rest of the so-called California School of Figurative Art painters-
artists of the London School/British Royal Academy such as Bernard Dunstan-
... and even an "abstract" artist such as Howard Hodgkin-
In Degas' late "Bathers" the artist employs all the skills and knowledge of a lifetime producing a nearly unsurpassed body of work. With his mastery of drawing, the artist was able to suggest not only the structure of the human form, but also the gestures... its movement through space... with but the most elementary of means. Like his heir, Matisse, he captures the essentials in a manner that appears almost effortless... and yet is anything but:
'Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.
A picture is an artificial work, outside nature. It calls for as much cunning as the commission of a crime.
No art is less spontaneous than mine.- Degas
Degas' late "bathers" take on a monumentality and a sense of motion every bit worthy of comparison with Michelangelo:
Like Michelagelo, Degas, in spite of being limited to a single figure, is able to "unearth" a wealth of bold and unexpected poses and points of view, and convey a dynamic, explosive, and expressive array of gestures. Yet Degas, unlike Michelangelo, captures such tension as his women twist and torque through space in the most common of everyday acts: reaching to dry their feet or scrub their backs, dry their hair or pull on a dressing gown.
For all the stylistic evolution, certain features of Degas's work remained the same throughout his life. He always painted indoors, preferring to work in his studio, either from memory, photographs, sketches, or live models. The human figure... primarily female... remained his core subject. He produced few landscapes... and these were always painted or drawn from memory or imagination.
It was not unusual for him to repeat a subject many times, varying the composition or treatment. He was a deliberative artist whose works, as Andrew Forge has written, "were prepared, calculated, practiced, developed in stages. They were made up of parts. The adjustment of each part to the whole, their linear arrangement, was the occasion for infinite reflection and experiment." Degas himself explained, "In art, nothing should look like chance, not even movement".
Although Degas is known to have been working in pastel as late as the end of 1907, and is believed to have continued making sculpture as late as 1910, he apparently ceased working in 1912, when the impending demolition of his longtime residence on the rue Victor Massé forced him to move to quarters on the boulevard de Clichy. He spent the last years of his life, nearly blind, restlessly wandering the streets of Paris before dying in September 1917. On his death bed, he has been quoted as exclaiming, "Damn, and just when I was starting to get it!"
