Customer Reviews

Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood (Men and Masculinity)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Of course, Eakins is not a "minor American master of the late 19th century," but rather one of the finest, and most copiously studied, of American painters. Furthermore, his art is not primarily a study of white manhood; indeed, he painted more images of black men than any of his contemporaries. Finally, his male nudes embody more than merely homosocial attitudes, as the Australian (and relatively conservative) critic Robert Hughes has noted: "The beautiful figure of the standing youth [in _Swimming_, the cover image for this volume], buttock thrust out, is as erotically coded as Dontello's _David_...."

What both Berger and the previous reviewer seem to miss is the multiplicity in Eakins' work. This was an artist working at a liminal period, when images of men, whether clothed sportsmen or nudes, could embody both virility and erotic appeal. Previous American artists failed to realize the erotic possibilities of their frontier heroes, while 20th century painters chose either to emphasize eroticism (as in Cadmus and later, even more blatant, gay artists) or athletic heroism (consider here Leroy Neiman, or other artists of sport usually consigned to the "kitsch" brigade). Eakins did not work in an innocent time, nor did he possess an innocent eye; nonetheless his paintings, through their rigorously scientific realism and embrace of a physical ethic, were marginally acceptable to the guardians of public decency. It is fitting that Eakins would eventually land in hot water for exposing a male model to female students: his erotic attitude lay somewhere in the borderlands between idealization of the athletic male and celebration of the discerning female.

Berger's volume opens an important discussion, long resigned to platitudes, regarding Eakins' attitudes toward the male nude and toward masculinity. Nonetheless, his analysis leaves much to be desired.

I have no training in art history or criticism, but I have long been fascinated by the paintings of Thomas Eakins, a minor American master of the late-19th century. This book by Martin Berger, who teaches Art History and English at the State University of New York, Buffalo, seeks to place Eakins's work within the cultural context of the "Gilded Age," an era which many social historians believe to have been characterized by a "crisis in manhood," so I approached this book with great anticipation. The text, which includes a number of illustrations, is only 123 pages long, and this is one book in which more might, indeed, have been more.

In the introduction, Berger wisely informs the reader that this book is "neither a biography nor a standard art historical study." It is, instead a "cultural art history" which explores "Eakins's art in fashioning manhood for both the painter and his white, middle class contemporaries." According to Berger, Eakins's paintings "do not merely reflect cultural concerns, but are engaged in both legitimating and forming conceptions of Victorian manhood." This is intriguing because, Berger writes, "Eakins's images of men" are "characterized by physical activity, mental engagement, and nudity." Assuming that there is some broader cultural significance to these images, what do they tell us about late-19th century American society? In Berger's view: "On the simplest level, Eakins's athletic canvases offer symbolic reassurance by linking the artist to a series of unimpeachably masculine characters and professions." Berger explains that "the manliness of Eakins's athletes was a function not simply of their participation in sports, but also of their success, modernity, and `whiteness.'"

According to Berger, "most critics faulted Eakins's monumental Gross Clinic of 1875...for the violence of its realism." Berger observes, however, that, after 1900, "critics began consistently to interpret the artist's bluntness as a strength." What purpose was served by Eakins's severe realism? Berger writes: "In the aftermath of the Civil War, questions of gendered identity gained ascendance as white, middle-class men struggled against sweeping national transformations." Berger explains that, in the 19th century, and especially during the great and radical economic changes after the Civil War, "middle-class men "took their social identity largely from their success or failure at work." Eakins's paintings of men at work (and play) were efforts to provide insights into their social identities. In The Champion, Single Sculls, according to Berger, Eakins seeks to convey the fact that competitive rowing's development was encouraged by the industrial revolution, and this explains why the sculler is depicted against a background containing railroad bridges, a train, and a steamboat. In The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake Boat, according to Berger, "Eakins "points to rowing's reliance on both physical and mental skills." Berger concludes his chapter entitled "Manly Associations" by writing: "By judiciously negotiating a path through the conflicted demands of Gilded Age masculinity, [Eakins] offered images of athletes that reassured middle-class American men about their masculine identities."

Eakins completed only 14 canvases depicting nudes or scantily-clad figures, but, according to Berger, "it is for his depiction of naked men that the artist is most frequently remembered today." In fact, Berger writes, "[w]hile Victorian critics could endure the exposed buttocks of the male patient in Eakins's portrayal of the Gross Clinic,...many were profoundly disturbed by his depiction of Christ's body in The Crucifixion in 1880," in which Jesus wears only a small cloth tied around his waist. According to Berger: "By illustrating nudes without narrative excuses, the painter's canvases make the case for the value of nudes in their own right." The best example of this, according to Berger is The Swimming Hole, which shows six naked men relaxing on a stone pier and cavorting in the surrounding water. According to Berger, in this painting "Eakins points subtly to the recreation available to men of the middle class,"who were permitted by the "solidifying industrial economy of late-nineteenth-century America...to acquire great wealth and so maximize their available time for play." In Berger's view: "Swimming offered a practical model for daily life. (Berger notes that the scenes depicted by Eakins's often were intensely personal, and, in several of his paintings, Eakins included a small self-portrait.) Furthermore Berger also analyzes at length Eakins's boxing painting Salutat, in which a victorious boxer, shown from the rear, wearing only what we might, today, call a thong, "salutes the cheering crowd." According to Berger, this painting "visualizes the economic ties between an athlete and his patrons." In addition, Berger asserts that this painting recalls others by Eakins in which "nude figures strike poses for male onlookers who clearly value their physicality." Berger offers some fascinating and revealing insights into Eakins's artistic process: "Throughout Eakins's career, the vast majority of his paintings were preceded by fastidious preparatory drawings in which the artist would construct a horizontal grid, on which he plotted every detail of the final work." In Berger's view: "Eakins's working process embodied his scientific credentials...[and] helped shore up his masculine position by permitting him an unprecedented degree of control." Furthermore, according to the author, "Eakins made himself seem more masculine by associating himself with virile athletes and scientific craftsmen and by employing a working process with positive links to science."

It is too easy to dismiss Eakins's paintings, especially the male nudes, as erotica intended to push the envelope to the limit of the artist's day. Although Eakins frequently depicts a world which is homosocial, it is unlikely he sought only to stimulate male viewers. Berger emphasizes, for instance, that Salutat was shown at the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where "Eakins's canvas offered women an apparent window into the lives of their male contemporaries." And that, by analogy, clearly is Berger's main premise: The paintings of Thomas Eakins allow us, at the beginning of the 21st century, to look into the construction of white, middle-class American manhood at the end of the 19th.

Admittedly biased, this book was written by a former professor of mine. But actually I didn't like him very much while I was in his class so maybe I'm not so biased after all.

I used this book as a source for an American Art History essay on Eakins and thought it brought up some really interesting ideas and associations that are generally excluded from other broader texts or other glorification works on Eakins. It really focuses on his body of work first and how it relates to the period of time in which Eakins' lived rather than focus on his personal life and some of its more scandalous stories. It was also not a difficult read, which art history texts notoriously are. All in all I would give this a solid recommendation to any one interested in Eakins' art.

Thomas Eakins (1844 - 1916) is generally considered to be one of the greatest American artists who ever lived. His works continue to circulate in museum shows, separated into venues that feature portraiture, the American view of Europe, the at of medicine and the art of sports - a spread of interests not matched by any other painter from his time. There have been many books written about the various aspects of Eakins - his insistence on using the nude model in this classes that were for both men and women and the scandals that inclination produced, his involvement with photography, his fascination with the photographic explorations of man in motion of Eadweard Muybridge, his bold use of the male nude in his paintings that were viewed by a rigid Victorian audience, the question of his sexuality, etc.

In this very brief and immensely readable book, MAN MADE: THOMAS EAKINS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF GILDED AGE MANHOOD, author Martin Berger takes on the stance that Eakins was a forerunner of the change in perception of the American male. It is not original thought but rather a distillation of ideas that many other historian and art critics have explored. That Eakins included African American men in his paintings as simply part of the image he was observing and preserving through paint on canvas. Some critics have stated that 'Martin Berger has been the most perceptive and sophisticated critic of masculinity in nineteenth-century American art. With this book he consolidates that analysis triumphantly--and extends its implications, first into a consideration of all of Eakins's oeuvre, and then into related discourses of sexuality, domesticity, and race. MAN MADE has useful things to say to scholars in all fields of American culture.'

The book is strong and will be one that all those who deeply admire the art of Thomas Eakins will want to own. That it is the definitive discussion remains to be seen. Grady Harp, July 11

This short book brilliantly explores the relationship between Eakins' work and American notions of manliness in the period. The historical grounding and the jargon-free language of the book make it especially useful for non-art historians.