Eakins Revealed

An examination of the dark side of American painter Thomas Eakins's life and work unveils new facts about the artist's life and makes sense of the enigmas of his work, documenting the bitter personal feuds and family tragedies that affected him, as well as the artist's own tendency toward psychological abuse and sexual harassment.

How does museum location shape the interpretation of an art object by critics, curators, art historians, and others? To what extent is the value of a work of art determined by its location? Providing a close examination of individual works of American art in relation to gallery and museum location, this anthology presents case studies of paintings, sculpture, photographs, and other media that explore these questions about the relationship between location and the prescribed meaning of art. It takes an alternate perspective in that it provides in-depth analysis of works of art that are less well known than the usual American art suspects, and in locations outside of art museums in major urban cultural centers. By doing so, the contributors to this volume reveal that such a shift in focus yields an expanded and more complex understanding of American art. Close examinations are given to works located in small and mid-sized art museums throughout the United States, museums that generally do not benefit from the resources afforded by more powerful cultural establishments such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Works of art located at institutions other than art museums are also examined. Although the book primarily focuses on paintings, other media created from the Colonial Period to the present are considered, including material culture and craft. The volume takes an inclusive approach to American art by featuring works created by a diverse group of artists from canonical to lesser-known ones, and provides new insights by highlighting the regional and the local.

"Thomas Eakins and the Cultures of Modernity is the first book to situate Philadelphia's greatest realist painter in relation to the historical discourse of cultural difference. In this study Alan C. Braddock reveals that modern anthropological perceptions of "culture," which many art historians attribute to Eakins, did not become current until after the artist's death in 1916. Braddock finds in the work of Thomas Eakins a lifelong engagement with aesthetic and social currents that extended well beyond his native city of Philadelphia, indicating the persistence of a worldly sensibility long after he had concluded his formative studies in Europe during the 1860s. Braddock shows how Eakins developed a localized cosmopolitanism all his own, based in Philadelphia but tapped into a global field of visual production."--Jacket.

An unconventional history of Philadelphia that operates at the threshold of cultural and environmental studies, A Greene Country Towne expands the meaning of community beyond people to encompass nonhuman beings, things, and forces. By examining a diverse range of cultural acts and material objects created in Philadelphia—from Native American artifacts, early stoves, and literary works to public parks, photographs, and paintings—through the lens of new materialism, the essays in A Greene Country Towne ask us to consider an urban environmental history in which humans are not the only protagonists. This collection reimagines the city as a system of constantly evolving constituents and agencies that have interacted over time, a system powerfully captured by Philadelphia artists, writers, architects, and planners since the seventeenth century. In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume are Maria Farland, Nate Gabriel, Andrea L. M. Hansen, Scott Hicks, Michael Dean Mackintosh, Amy E. Menzer, Stephen Nepa, John Ott, Sue Ann Prince, and Mary I. Unger.

Religious imagery was ubiquitous in late-nineteenth-century American life: department stores, schoolbooks, postcards, and popular magazines all featured elements of Christian visual culture. Such imagery was not limited to commercial and religious artifacts, however, for it also found its way into contemporary fine art. In Signs of Grace, Kristin Schwain looks anew at the explicitly religious work of four prominent artists in this period--Thomas Eakins, F. Holland Day, Abbott Handerson Thayer, and Henry Ossawa Tanner--and argues that art and religion performed analogous functions within American culture. Fully expressing the concerns and values of turn-of-the-century Americans, this artwork depicted religious figures and encouraged the beholders' communion with them.Describing how these artists drew on their religious beliefs and practices, as well as how beholders looked to art to provide a transcendent experience, Schwain explores how a modern conception of faith as an individual relationship with the divine facilitated this sanctified relationship between art and viewer. This stress on the interior and subjective experience of religion accentuated the artist's efforts to engage beholders personally with works of art; how better to fix the viewer's attention than to hold out the promise of salvation? Schwain shows that while these new visual practices emphasized individual encounters with art objects, they also carried profound social implications. By negotiating changes in religious belief--by aestheticizing faith in a new, particularly American manner--these practices contributed to evolving debates about art, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender.

Urban realism, snow-covered streets of New York, boxing matches, children on the banks of a river, the painters of the Ash Can School preferred realistic images. Their paintings are a true hymn to noise and sensations. This unconventional movement enabled the birth of a true national artistic identity which broke free from the establishment. The Ash Can School resolutely promoted the affirmation of the modernist current of American art. Edward Hopper, who was a student of Robert Henri, embraced the principles of this movement and brought them to another level.

A Companion to American Art presents 35newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars that explore themethodology, historiography, and current state of the field ofAmerican art history. Features contributions from a balance of established andemerging scholars, art and architectural historians, and otherspecialists Includes several paired essays to emphasize dialogue and debatebetween scholars on important contemporary issues in American arthistory Examines topics such as the methodological stakes in thewriting of American art history, changing ideas about whatconstitutes “Americanness,” and the relationship of artto public culture Offers a fascinating portrait of the evolution and currentstate of the field of American art history and suggests futuredirections of scholarship

"In this book, Marc Egnal argues that the arc of middle-class culture reflects the evolution of the economy from the near-subsistence agriculture of the 1750s to the extraordinarily unequal society of the twenty-first century. By using literature and art to explain the shifts in values over this lengthy span and highlighting class conflict within the American economy over time, Egnal offers particularly unique insights into the development of middle-class America. By delving into a myriad of fictional characters and their complex worlds, Egnal sheds light on an array of issues including the shifting roles of women in society, the resulting changes in masculinity, waning religious beliefs through the centuries, and a broad exploration of African American characters"--