अरसिक किती हा मॅने, हा पोर्ट्रेट फाडून पडून राहिला...Edouard Manet Slashes His Picture by Degas

लक्ष्मीबाई टिळक:
"...कविता केली म्हणजे त्याची पहिली श्रोती मी. मी इकडे कामदारणीला सांगत असले किंवा कोणाशी काही बोलत असले म्हणजे तर त्याची कविता वाचून दाखविण्याची घाई व्हायची, आणि माझे दुर्लक्ष आहेसे दिसले म्हणजे त्याने ती कविता रागाने फाडून टाकायची. मग दत्तू-बेबीने त्याला चिडवायचे,

- "अरसिक किती हा मेला
हा कविता फाडून बाहिर गेला"-

मग त्याने हसायचे व पुन्हा ती लिहून काढायची. ठोंबऱ्याला कविता फाडण्याचा बराच नाद असावा..."

 (पृष्ठ: २८४, 'स्मृतिचित्रे', १९३४/२०००, वरदा प्रकाशन)

[ठोंबऱ्या= त्र्यंबक बापूजी ठोंबरे= बालकवी, १८९०-१९१८]

Portrait of Edouard Manet and his wife Suzanne

Artist: Edgar Degas

Alastair Smart, The Spectator, October 15 2016, review of Sebastian Smee's 'The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals and Breakthroughs in Modern Art':

"...When the old curmudgeon Edgar Degas died in 1917, a stunning trove of works by Edouard Manet — eight paintings, 14 drawings and 60 prints — was discovered in his studio. There, too, was a portrait of Manet and his wife Suzanne, painted by Degas 50 years earlier. But its right-hand third was missing — which included half of Suzanne’s body and all of the piano she was playing. For some reason, Manet had put a knife through the canvas and sent Degas packing with what remained...

...Artistic inspiration is notoriously tricky to pinpoint. What’s more, in this case we’re dealing with eight of the most brilliantly outlandish individuals in art history. They’re surely the last people whose behaviour and feats we should be trying to explain by way of a pattern.

Heaven only knows what prompted Manet to slash that picture of him by Degas — or, for that matter, why Degas decided to keep it."


In India, of course, we are used to seeing some of the greatest art mutilated by either humans or the passage of time or that has been abandoned midway and I have learned to find great beauty in them.