Going against the crowd challenges perceptions and allows people to be innovative. The ability to create and change people’s perceptions can come with the price of being an outcaste and ostracized if society disapproves. Once rejected by society for his controversial and scandalous artistic styles, today Thomas Eakins is recognized as one of America’s greatest painters for his collective body of work. His body of work combined perception, strength, character, and commitment to achieve realism. Through his paintings and photography Thomas’s interests devoured most of his time as he thoroughly studied the anatomy and muscles of the human body. Thomas Eakins love affection for realism and immense beauty found within anatomy encouraged him to pursue perfection as he mastered drawing a flawless human body; by paying attention to every detail in his paintings: The Gross Clinic and The Agnew Clinic.
Today society proclaims Thomas Eakins as the founder of American Realism during the nineteenth century but throughout his lifetime critics considered his artwork to be controversial. Throughout his entire career, his approval ratings were low and he sold very few artworks. His disapproval rating from the public’s eye only increased with his scandalous teaching styles, that forced his students to model naked for each other. Yet, through all the controversy surrounding Eakins he stayed true to his passion. Thomas Eakins captured the true depictions of the people he painted even if it is not what they wished to see, while most portrait artists made changes to reality, he always painted the truth about the human body. Many disliked how stubborn Thomas was with his unwillingness to change.
Accurate proportions were vital in Thomas Ea...
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...body were too much for the people who viewed this painting and it was rejected because of the graphic and horrific content displayed.
Works Cited
Burns, Sarah, “Ordering the Artist's Body: Thomas Eakins's Acts of Self‐Portrayal,”
American Art, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Spring 2005), The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, pp. 82-107.
Erwin, Robert, “Who Was Thomas Eakins?” The Antioch Review, Vol. 66, No. 4,
Celebrity Deaths (Fall, 2008), Antioch Review, Inc. pp. 655-664. www.jstor.org.maurice.bgsu.edu/stable/25475641> Goodrich, Lloyd, “Thomas Eakins, Realist,” Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum, Vol.
25, No. 133, Thomas Eakins 1844-1916 (March, 1930), Philadelphia Museum of
Art, pp. 8-17.
Art has always been considered the effervescent universal tool of communication. Art does not require a concrete directive . One sculpture,drawing or written creative piece, can evoke a myriad of emotions and meaning . Artistic pieces can sometimes be considered the regurgitation of the artist's internal sanctum. In Richard Hooks graphic painting,Adoption of the Human Race, the effect of the imagery,symbols ,color and emotional content projects a profound unification of a spiritual edict.
As far as the human body is on the real and the anatomical features it fails to give an Idea of the human body in depth but an idea nonetheless. The painting in general is very proportional and in a way the people are proportional as a whole to the center; Jesus Christ. The main body part that seems to alwa...
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“An illustration is a visual editorial - it 's just as nuanced. ” or at least Charles M. Blow says. In all actuality, what would the world be without illustrations? As ironic as it may sound, the world would be flat without 2-dimensional illustrations. Illustrations bring more context to the world around us as styles and aesthetic expectations evolve. From cave paintings to Google’s Material Design, humanity has made many innovations in art and design. Thomas Nast deserves a spot in history for his contributions to aesthetic progress. Thomas Nast has made the world a much more aesthetically pleasing world with his revolution to integrate illustrations in media. His revolution ultimately created a more ethical world with his opposition against
Adams, Henry. Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist. Oxford [England: Oxford UP,
To look at Charles W. White’s paintings is to see early 1900s Black America through the lens of a social realist. African-American novelist Ralph Ellison stood behind men and women, like Charles White who used art to express their personal views on their experiences of being Black in America (Heritage Gallery). “Most of the social realists of the period were concerned less with tragedy than with injustice,” said Ellison during a 1955 interview published in the Paris Review. “I wasn’t, and am not, primarily concerned with injustice, but with art” (Chester 1955). As early as the late 1700s, blacks began narrating and writing autobiographies in an effort to create “in words, a portrait of a human being” and to combat the derogatory images prevalent in American visual art forms (Gates 1990).
Sherwood Anderson is identified as the "Father of Realism", the master of characterization, and the creator of the epiphany. He broke through the barriers of Classic American Literature and introduced a style that is focused on distinct moments. Although remarkable, many of his stories lack the traditional structure of plot. Instead Anderson states that these single bursts of inspiration are the stories of people, and are therefore to be left untouched upon completion. His crowning achievement, Winesburg, Ohio, is a collection of anecdotes focusing on a town of "grotesques". These tragically hopeless people cannot convey their passion to others. Each has centered his or her life around a profound truth that only he or she is able to recognize; the response the grotesque receives concerning this understanding inevitably leads to their tribulation. Lonely recluses, they continuously struggle with their contained feelings. Anderson portrays moments in which the passion tries to resurface, but no longer has the strength to do so. In essence, these "adventures" are tiny glimpses of failure. The grotesques each represent "a moment, a mood, or a secret that lay deep in Anderson's life and for which he was finding the right words for at last." (4)
Finocchio, Ross. "Nineteenth–Century French Realism" In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. 2000. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 12 Mar., 2014.
Many time periods have set the bar high for today’s authors, such as the revolutionary time in Europe when Realism was brought into play. More specifically, the creation of Realism has inspired authors and artists alike to create a sense of honesty and reality within their works of fiction. Realism has set the standard for literature and art, all around the world, because of ...
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David Hammons and Adrian Piper are both American artists known for different reasons. Hammons is well known for his artwork around New York and his range of materials, as well as his support for the black power movement. Piper is a philosopher known for her conceptual artwork, such as her performance artworks, and artwork addressing “otherness”. In this paper, however; the two artworks I will be discussing are David Hammons’ American Costume and Adrian Piper’s Self Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features. Both artworks are self-portraits relating to identity and the portrayal of African-Americans during the late 1900s, following the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the United
Traveling back to the 1920’s African American Art was at its’s height. At the time there were two typical styles of art that were widely used, Folk Art and High Art. While both styles were different, artist of both sides had disagreements of which art style better represented Racial Pride.
Witherbee, A. (2013). Counterpoint: Education, the Masses, and Art. Points Of View: Arts Funding, 6. Retrieved April 19,2014 , from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=12421040&site=pov-live
The “privileged minority” mystifies works of art in order to control people’s view. Berger explains how Hals becomes after he painted the two paintings. According to Berger, “he obtained three loads of peat on public charity, otherwise he would have frozen to death. Those who now sat for him were administrators of such public charity” (158).
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