Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood

by Martin A. Berger

Often censured during his lifetime for his insistence on studying and painting from the nude, Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) is now acclaimed as one of America's greatest realist painters. Man Made examines Eakins's art and life, illustrating how the artist used his canvases to cope with the complex requirements of Victorian gender. Martin Berger reads a series of Eakins's paintings, ranging from early to late works, giving a nuanced and elegant examination of Eakins's portrayal of white, middle-class manhood. This provocative cultural art history treats these paintings in terms of what they reveal about Eakins's own identity as well as the nation's changing ideals of manhood during the final years of the nineteenth century.

181 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2000

About the author

My work explores the role played by the visual arts in identity formation. Making use of an eclectic assortment of primary evidence, including painting, photography, architecture, film and literature, I analyze how Americans both resist and embrace dominant norms of identity. While specifically concerned with the impact of identity formation on disempowered peoples, my scholarship consistently addresses the role of art in representing the identities of our society's most privileged members. In other words, instead of focusing on how images impact our sense of what it means to be "feminine" or "black," I explore how they condition our understanding of being "masculine" and "white."Concerned that the historical emphasis of scholars on representations of disempowered peoples has inadvertently reinforced the perception that empowered identities are fixed, or even natural, I illuminate their constructed and fluid nature. Because the identity of blacks, for example, has long been defined in opposition to that of whites, it is clear that privileged racial categories must play a significant role in impacting the lived experiences of people of color. People of color are ultimately harmed by racial norms and expectations that disadvantage them, but also by racial values that confer unearned advantages to whites.My 2005 book, Sight Unseen, explores how racial identity guides the interpretation of the visual world. Through a careful analysis of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century paintings, photographs, museums, and early motion pictures, I illustrate how a shared investment in whiteness invisibly guides what European-Americans see, what they accept as true, and ultimately, what legal, social, and economic policies they enact.

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Eakins: A Continuing Topic of Speculation

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