With time, the impressionists grew more radical. This was partly due to eye troubles: Monet became blind (but didn't stop painting the bridges of Giverny). Vincent van Gogh, drinker of kerosene, turpentine, and absinthe, probably thought the coronas he painted around stars and streetlamps were real. Edgar Degas became severely myopic, which led him to do more and more sculpture ("I must learn a blind man's trade now," Degas said). Auguste Renoir, poisoned by his pastel paints, became a rheumatic cripple. But whether their abstraction was motivated by physiology or philosophy, it became
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