If someone tells me they've seen a movie, theater show or art exhibit once, I assume they're culturally curious. If they tell me they've seen the same show twice, I assume they liked that show. If they tell me they've seen it seven or eight times, I assume there's something deeper going on.
Many observers have commented on how the "Manet/Degas" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which closed on Sunday, served in part as an examination of a complicated friendship. Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas were contemporaries and, in some sense, rivals; their art often seemed to be in fractious conversation. (A Times review of the show called the pair "famous frenemies.") The show itself was, to my eye, excellent and well worth a visit — but when I heard that Thomas Beller had attended the show over a half-dozen times, I needed to find out why.
Beller is a well-known writer to anyone who's followed the New York literary scene; he published a celebrated short story collection, "Seduction Theory," in 1995 and a novel, "The Sleep-Over Artist," in 2000; he ran a highly regarded literary magazine, Open City, from 1991 to 2011; and he is currently the head of creative writing at Tulane University. He also, in his way, had a Manet/Degas kind of friendship with the novelist Robert Bingham, who died of a drug overdose in 1999. (Bingham's story and legacy are explored in this segment on "Charlie Rose," in which Beller appears.) As he explains in his essay, published this past weekend, "Manet/Degas" isn't just an art exhibit. It's a poignant dissection of just the kind of thorny but meaningful friendship that, for many of us, can feel all too familiar.
Long-term friendships, whether among artistic collaborators, rivals or some status in between, are nearly always a delicate negotiation. The best of them are nearly always worth it. These are the kind of truths that the most affecting films, plays and art exhibits can illuminate, which is why we return to them again and again — and, in some cases, again.
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