"Why do you say that Degas has trouble getting a hard-on? Degas lives like a little notary and doesn’t like women..."

"... knowing that if he liked them and fucked them a lot he would become cerebrally ill and hopeless at painting. Degas’s painting is virile and impersonal precisely because he has resigned himself to being personally no more than a little notary, with a horror of riotous living."

Wrote Vincent Van Gogh in a letter, in 1888, quoted in "A Compulsive Perfectionist/The intensely private Edgar Degas reveals himself intermittently in his voluminous correspondence, in moments of unexpected self-awareness and candor" (NYRB). 

But the article is about Degas, not Van Gogh. We know Van Gogh is interesting. What about Degas? Okay, I scanned the article so you don't have to (and I even have a subscription to the NYRB). Here's a Degas quote for you:

"How can one chat with people like that? Let’s see, with a Jewish Belgian who is a naturalized Frenchman! It’s as if one wished to speak with a hyena, a boa. Such people do not belong to the same humanity as us."

Is it too late even to try to understand Joe Biden's calling a woman a "lying dog-faced pony soldier," or is this nothing but an absurd epitaph on a dead political campaign?

ADDED: Here's my reaction, and I have not looked at much of the commentary. I think Biden believes he's lovable, and he can kid in a silly way and people will know it's all in good fun. I don't know why he thinks he can swing around so freely when he's trying to gain the deep trust needed to be President, but I don't know why anyone pushing 80 thinks he can be President or why a grown man in politics thinks he can nuzzle and sniff at the hair of young girls other than to think he thinks he's Joe and everybody knows Joe. Joe is Joe.

That's all just pretty crazy but not all that different from Trump's confident barreling ahead, being himself. Maybe that just works. Many people get it. Some people. The only question is are there enough people who connect with that sort of thing. For Trump, there are. For Biden, maybe not, but what other path is there for Biden? Come on, people, get him — understand him the way he wants to be understood — as a fully competent, experienced politician who knows how to have fun with you lying dog-faced pony soldiers.

The only thing I'll add to that is I have and will have a special problem with "dog-faced" until Roseanne Barr is uncanceled. The greatest female comedian of all time was banished from her #1 TV show — had it snatched away and her brilliant character killed even after the actress was booted out — for the sin of comparing a woman to an animal. I was just looking at Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar speech, where he said, "I think that’s when we’re at our best: when we support each other. Not when we cancel each other out for our past mistakes."

BONUS: "Dog-faced" has its own entry in the (unlinkable) OED. The examples go back to 1607:

1607 E. Topsell Hist. Foure-footed Beastes 11 He describeth them to be blacke haird, Dog-faced, and like little men.
1663 J. Mayne tr. Lucian Part of Lucian 272 That ugly, Dogg faced Aegyptian...
2002 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) Oct. 332/1 Degas was not exaggerating when he revealed his dancers to have been a depressingly dog-faced bunch.

Here's that Vanity Fair article about Degas's unpleasant-looking ballerinas. Excerpt:

At the Skylight Café...

... make an impression.

Brilliant. Beautiful! The ultimate in art + science.

"Finding Degas’s Lost Portrait With a Particle Accelerator."

Until recently, attempts to capture the image underlying “Portrait of a Woman” with conventional X-ray and infrared techniques have only yielded the shadowy outline of another woman. In a study published on Thursday, however, a team of researchers reports that they have revealed the hidden layer underneath the painting, which hangs in the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, at a very high resolution. It seems to be a portrait of Emma Dobigny, a model who was a favored subject of Degas.

Click through to the study for some great details.

Picasso looks way more photographic on line than in the print edition. The print edition has a bit more to do with the real thing. When I see a painting I'm used to seeing reproduced I'm always impressed, once again, by what paint looks like. The images on line are fascinating--I've got some of my own to post some day--but they are only things that resemble paintings. The texture (metrotexture) is different, and the size often seems absurd.

But I really want to quibble about grammar. The New York Times writes: "The collection includes works by Manet, Degas, Monet and Sargent as well as a rare Rose Period Picasso, 'Boy With a Pipe.'"

Isn't every painting rare? There's one. That's the height of rarity. Rose Period Picassos may be rare, but "Boy With a Pipe" is no more rare than any given Clown Painting From the Collection of Diane Keaton.

I know they mean "The collection includes works by Manet, Degas, Monet and Sargent as well as a rare Rose Period Picasso. The Picasso is 'Boy With a Pipe.'"

Why stick to logic if you might have to write two sentences? Just go ahead and cram more information into one sentence.