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The Eternal Mystery Of Edgar Degas, A Man Obsessed With Dance | HuffPost Entertainment

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A lover, a documentarian or a voyeur? A new exhibition at MoMA lets us question Degas' fixation with ballet.

In a game of word association, the name Edgar Degas provokes a stream of familiar responses: painter, French, Impressionism. Maybe absinthe and naked women, too. But probably, before you even mutter "artist," you've let "dance" or "ballet" roll off your tongue. In fact, as you read this, you're likely envisioning ladies in tutus bowing to crowds and lunging from barres, stuck with their arms in perpetual fifth position. Degas, born to a moderately wealthy family in Paris in 1834, was obsessed with dance -- he is said to have described his soul as a worn pink satin ballet shoe -- but less so wi

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