EAKINS REVEALED: The Secret Life of an American Artist
Henry Adams, . . Oxford Univ., $40 (583pp) ISBN 978-0-19-515668-3
Don't let the lurid title and subtitle fool you: this is an academic study, full of pedantic asides, boring psychologizing (in which figures in many paintings are mapped onto figures from Eakins's family) and interminable stretches of interpretation of often too-small reproductions (330 b&w in all). But Eakins (1844–1916) is undoubtedly a painter of major interest, and Adams, a formidable art historian who collaborated with Ken Burns on a Thomas Hart Benton documentary for PBS, does have a fresh take that he works out with rigor and care. He links evidence for sexual trauma in Eakins's childhood to evidence of subsequent episodes of violence and sexual misconduct in a manner that is neither prurient nor moralizing. And he displays great affinity for, and astute observations of, the work itself, which includes some of the most striking American paintings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An entire chapter dedicated to Eakins's ultrarealist operating room depiction
Reviewed on: 02/28/2005
Genre: Nonfiction