“[Edgar Degas] once said that, were he to start an art school, it would be in six floors of a single house. Beginners would start with the model on the top floor. As students developed, they would move down, floor by floor, until they reached street level; to consult the original model, they would have to climb the stairs each time. Art for him was not just about memory, it was a Platonic conception of different layers of being.”
Alastair Macauly, “Workers Wearing Toeshoes,” The New York Times, September 4, 2011
