The Gross Clinic and Eakins's women at the Philadelphia Art Museum

Eakins is a very Philadelphia artist, and in a way I guess American.
There is a lot that has been written about Eakins but still a lot I like about him, and maybe some things that remain to be said.Maybe not by me, but in any case he seems to be vast subject.

I feel like he is very American in a way that David Lynch,William Burroughs and Roman Polanski are American, he looks at the armature/what's underneath. Lynch looks under the surface of American society, Burroughs looks at the subconcious, and Polanski looks at what is going on in urban or political or international society compared to the law (I guess?). Eakins looked at the armature the muscles of the body,the actualities of movement the actualities of being human and in looking closely at the
the gloss of class and gender and racial differentiation became irrelevant in the face the reality of the individual.

Eakin's depictions of women are especially memorable. In a time (like any time actually, including today) when women tended to be idealized, Eakins portrays his women as individuals. Addie sheds a tear if you look closely enough. Only in his latest paintings only maybe one, "The Old Fashioned Dress", are women really idealized. There it is not a flattering idealization. Portraying people as individuals rather than ideals seems to be tied up in a some of the ideals of equality that Eakins was exposed to in his time in Central Highschool. I think its significant that Eakins wasn't drafted into the Civil War ( his Dad brought him out of the draft). There is something endlessly innocent about Eakins's art despite the obsession with nudity and the accusations of indecency and molestation.

A lot of Eakins's work has bounced around the country, but lately it seems Philadelphia has come to appreciate what may be the city's most famous
artist more.A lot of people decided that Eakin's major works belong in
Philadelphia.Money was raised for the Philadelphia museum to acquire the
Gross Clinic,and so the newly cleaned painting is being showcased with much
pomp. It has been newly cleaned, removing a reddish light which his widow
Susan Eakins had complained about.

It's interesting to think about Eakins as a scandalous artist. Somehow when
things are more than a hundred years old they are expected to make you yawn.
Things become first scandalous and then irrelevant,or they are very popular,
without scandal but then also irrelevant, as time goes by. Arguably the only
eternal things are Greek vases or something.

The new emphasis on Eakins has a whole two walls gallery in the main building
of the Philadelphia art museum devoted to the artist, as well as sketches. His
other better known works are in a gallery which is set up like a 19th century
parlor, where you can see his Concert Singer.

I also loved seeing Eakin's student Tanner's painting next to some of the
Eakins's especially Tanner's "Annunciation" which I have really liked since
I was a kid. If the Virgin Mary were a historical person I do actually think
the whole Immaculate conception would look like how Tanner pictures it. It is interesting to see the direction some of Thomas Eakins's students took.

*by saying I like some Polanski movies doesn't mean I approve of raping a little girl, Eakins had a set of related issues in this regard too,and Burroughs shot his wife, not condoning any of it.