Double Jump

Double Jump
Thomas Eakins, Double Jump, 1885
By EMMA SHAPIRO
With the development of photography came increased experimentation. Thomas Eakins, a widely acknowledged realist painter, sculptor, photographer and educator, used photography to exhibit a representation of rapid movement and to prove the notion that machine can see more accurately than the human eye. As a painter he focused on painting his portraits realistically, which led him to an interest in photography. He is still acknowledged today as an innovator in the photographic field.

The nude in motion inspired Eakins, and he created many different photo-graphical pieces with this as the subject. He chose to photograph them in full sunlight in order to convey deep space and perspective. He photographed the nude jumping, running, pole vaulting, horse-back riding and any other forms of movement. Eakins painted nudes fully exposed and coming out to the audience, such as in William Rush and His Model. He depicts the nude woman walking towards the viewer, establishing that a nude does not need to be hidden but rather comfortable in their image. His intrigue in the human form eventually got him fired from the Pennsylvania Academy due to acts of impropriety in the classroom.

He used multiple photographs in one to convey a motion, like in Double Jump. He brought this experimentation and use of multiple subjects into his paintings as well. He used photographs and painted parts of many of them onto a singular canvas in order to give the allusion of different moments in time and show the complexity of time and space. He also carried over the movement he saw in his photographs to his paintings, like the boxing scenes of the late 1890s.
  • 7:00 AM

LGBT Artwork: The Swimming Hole

Camille O'Leary
LGBT Artwork
From Lesbos to New York
Curated by Camille O'Leary

Thomas Eakins, The Swimming Hole, 1884-1885

The nude body has been used as the most direct way to teach anatomy and train artists since the Renaissance. Nudes were Thomas Eakins's discipline when he taught at the Pensylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and he used this painting, The Swimming Hole, to demonstrate his mastery of the subject. Six men pose, frozen, on an outcropping of rock, caught motionless in the act of bathing together. Eakins himself can be seen in the lower right, in the place where an artist might normally sign their name.

Unknown, Dying Gaul, 220-230 BCE
Eakins photographed and sketched the young men, his students, in preparation for this masterwork, but also drew poses from classical statuary like the Dying Gaul. Eakins transferred the classical subject of the nude to the contemporary outdoors, shedding clothing, shoes, and other marks of civilization. Unnatural lighting emphasizes the lines of their poses, which suggest a smooth arc of movement from reclining to standing to diving into the water. Their poses are idealized and beautiful, reminiscent of Greek nudes, and all six face away from the viewer, further obscuring their identities to focus attention on their bodies, including that magnificent butt.

Eakins himself was dismissed from the academy in 1886, two years later. The popular story says he was dismissed for removing the loincloth from a male model in front of women students. He was involved in many more incidents that strained the boundaries of Victorian propriety, such as "demonstrating" the movements of the pelvis to a female student, pressuring both male and female students to pose nude, and offering himself as a nude model. Rumors said that he participated in sodomy and bestiality; certainly, Eakins seemed to prefer his young protege Samuel Murray to his wife. His voyeuristic tendencies were scandalous under the tight guidelines of Victorian society, and still highly questionable today, but his fascination with the nude meant that he pioneered techniques in the new field of motion photography, capturing the human body in action more precisely than ever before.

  • 7:00 AM

The Swimming Hole - Song of Myself

Leo Yuan
Thomas Eakins, Swimming, 1885

"I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself to be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize.

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time."

---Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

 Once a friend of mine challenged me to go skinny dipping with her. I told her challenge accepted, but I need to get my six pack abs first. Even though I haven't worked on my abs since, when I occasionally glance at them, as they remain one united pack, I wonder whether I have the guts to just strip and jump in even if I have a perfect six pack abs. It seems true that we are less vulnerable in clothes, as shame and self-consciousness are carefully kept in check, and the rule of civilized people is followed. But funny that we started out envisioning our gods naked. Obviously because they are perfect, so David wouldn't mind standing in a museum naked with hundreds of people walking around. But we are human beings. And with the increasing functions that we added to our garments, once upon a time, it became the artists' job to find beauty in nudity and understand who we are in the state of nature.

Thomas Eakins was one of the artists in late 19th century America to explore such a theme. With the development of photography, unlike many of his contemporaries, Eakins saw photography as a way to better observe and understand his objects. In a lake outside Philadelphia, he would set up his Kodak camera and capture the bath session of his nude students on films. In The Swimming Hole, Eakins employs the classic pyramidal composition; six figures are deliberately placed to form a triangle, where each figure poses in a classical, Hellenic gesture, demonstrating the ideal beauty and strength that seen in Greek sculptures. Hardly conscious of their nakedness, each figure seems content and fitting with the arcadian surroundings. It is perhaps that only in Arcadia, where no civilization rules applied, and no moral judgments are forced upon, can one fully accept oneself, and reflect, and be free. Like Walt Whitman writes in his Leaves of Grass, "I exist as I am, that is enough, / If no other in the world be aware I sit content, / And if each and all be aware I sit content. / One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself."

I will work on my abs.

  • 7:00 AM

The Gross Clinic

Austin Krause

Technological Effects on Society
Curated by Austin Krause 
Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic, 1875

One of the most important fields for developing new technology is in the medical field. In the modern day, it is one of the only fields that is seen to be necessary to develop new technology in. In the 21st century curing AIDS, diabetes, autism, and many other severe diseases/ disabilities are the ideal accomplishments for today's generations. It is the ideal goal for society and it is something that the human race has been trying to solve for the longest time.

The advancement of technology is accompanied by the increase of population in not just the human race, but in all living life form that is present on the earth. Increases in medical technology ultimately lead to better procedures in hospitals, safer ways to treat a disease, deliver a new born, or just cure the common cold. This is something that the human race can never have enough of. Howeverith technology growing, new obstacles arise.

  • 10:15 PM