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(More customer reviews)There is no question that Henry Adams scholarly book EAKINS REVEALED: THE SECRET LIFE OF AN AMERICAN ARTIST is an important tome in the already extensive library of the life and works of Thomas Eakins, an artist still considered by many to be the greatest American artist who ever lived. And if many Eakins' devotees find this information as gathered and regaled by Adams as an attempt to push Eakins of his historic pedestal, then I think the chosen title for this treatise has been misleading.
Adams has poured over countless reams of notes and letters and documents and oral histories (all well documented and scrutinized in his extensive bibliography) and presents another aspect of Eakins' life - that of a crude, exhibitionist, sexually ambiguous vs disturbed, depressed man obsessed with nudity and body functions and a man whose family history of cruelty, incest and madness informed his paintings.
The book is divided into three sections: Part One - The Eakins Legacy (including Eakins family background, odd living conditions, family quarrels, the deaths and insanities of those close to him, and including the infamous Loin Cloth Scandal that contributed to his being fired from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Part Two - Life and Art in which the previous information is shown to have influenced Eakins' portraits, rowing paintings, swimming paintings and the BIG paintings like 'The Gross Clinic', 'The Champion Single Sculls', 'William Rush' etc; and Part Three - The Case of Thomas Eakins in which Adams pulls it all together maintaining that indeed because of Adams' scholarship, Eakins is still the most important painter America has produced.
The question arises as to just how much of this Freudian muck raking is necessary and whether ultimately how important is this 'new' information to the viewer of Eakins' paintings. Yes, facts such as those presented (ad infinitum!) in this lengthy volume provide smarmy interest, if not material for a movie about a strange but great man. Others have written similarly about Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Artemsia Gentileschi, Bacon, Warhol, de Kooning, Pollock etc. No artist can stand before an easel and not have his/her interior feelings and experiences influence the painted work. But does all of this innuendo-plucking make or break an artist's place in history?
The argument Adams makes is ultimately strong and deserves respect: "Eakins, far from being the most moral of American artists, was surely one of the most profoundly confused, even disturbed. By making art out of the chaos, conflict, and scandal of his own life, Eakins brought us more deeply into the world of sorrow, suffering, and despair than any other American artist of the nineteenth century. By some peculiar alchemy, he made his dark feelings beautiful, as anyone can attest who has contemplated one of his major paintings. Their effect can only be described as hypnotic".
Where Adams succeeds in making his points is in his painting by painting dissection of all of the Freudian implications of composition, exhibitionism, indeterminate gender buttocks, hidden models, etc, yet his visual examples are so poorly presented in this volume that they are all but indecipherable. Would that the publishers had devoted more space to the paintings and even used color, an important component of Eakins' works, to make the lesson more workable.
Yet as in Adams summary, Thomas Eakins is such an important painter that any additional information or perspective only results in expanding our appreciation for his greatness. Adams writes well (if excessively) and if the reader can drop preconceived prejudice that Adams is out to dethrone Eakins by prying into his psyche, this is actually a fine read. And given some time for reactionary responses to die down, EAKINS REVEALED will be an important contribution to the art libraries. Grady Harp, August 05
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