The+Amateur+and+the+Professional+in+American+Civic+Discourse


 * These lessons are intended for a high school audience. They are designed to be taught in sequence. Each session should last no more than 40 minutes. Students will be required to participate actively in class discussions, complete assignments and engage the controlled vocabulary of art critics. They will compare //John Biglin in a// //Single Scull// to other portraits by Eakins, to the work of contemporary artists such as George Bellows, to the photography of Eadweard Muybridge and to contemporary paeans to the athlete such as the "That's G" campaign by Gatorade. Students will focus on the contrast between the amateur and professional in American civic discourse. A list of suggested class resources is included on this site. A discussion board will be added to allow faculty and students to share their critical assessments of Eakins's contribution to American realism and modernism.

Day One: The Champion Single Sculls**

Eakins launched his career with his portrait of his friend Max Schmitt, //The Champion Single Sculls,// which was exhibited for three days in 1871 at the Unioin League of Philadelphia. It revolutionized American realist depictions of athletes. Helen Cooper's insightful study of the //The Rowing// //Pictures// gives us a language for describing the truly American obsession with amateur and professional sports. The Champion Single Sculls "commemorates the victory of the great amateur oarsman Max Schmitt in the three mile race for the singlescull champonship of the Schuykill Navy Regatta in Philadelphia on October 5, 1870.

1) Students will work as a group to describe the most striking elements of //The Champion Single Sculls//. They will each contribute an original adjective and verb to describe the motion of the oars striking the water and one adverb to describe the intensity of the sculler's gaze and his kinesthetic prowess. 2) Students will compare Max Schmitt to a modern day amateur or professional athlete and attempt to draw a portrait of their chosen athlete in the heat of victory. 3) Students will once again generate a list of adjectives and verbs to describe the motion of the athlete's body as s/he executes a complex series of movements and a list of adverbs to describe the athlete's relationship to his/her surroundings and context. 4) Students will compare their two lists of words and decide which terms best define the artistry of the professional and which words connote the devotion of the amateur.

__Assignment__: Students will be encouraged to bring in a published photo of their modern day amateur or professional athlete.


 * Day Two: The Photographer's Perspective--Candid and Voyeuristic**

Thomas Eakins was greatly influenced by the shift in perceptual realism effected by the rising poularity of the camera obscura in the late nineteenth century. Photography sullied the innocence of America in the first few decades after its introduction. Eakins worked closely with Eadweard Muybridge who employed stop-motion techniques to isolate minscule shifts in posture and gait for racehorses and their jockeys. Edward Lucie-Smith weighs the advantages and disadvantages of succumbing to the temptation of the lens. Muybridge's Racehorse is bot real and unreal simultaneously: while the subject exists fixed in time and space, it loses its vitality even as it gains precision. 1) Students will compare their hand drawn portrait of a modern day amateur or professional athlete to the published photo they have brought with them. Students will be prompted to use [|www.spinscape.com] to generate a concept map to compare the realism of the canvas to the realism of negative film. Students will be asked to consider what is lost and gained in each medium 2) Students will compare //The Swimming Hole// by Thomas Eakins to //Forty-two Kids// by George Bellows. Students will be asked to articulate how both artists accentuate the athleticism of their subjects even as they celebrate the virility of the human form. Students will discuss why the canvas is a better medium for these portraits of amateur/leisure activities. The naked vulnerability of the subjects confronts the the observer. Students will be asked to consider how the medium renegotiates the relationship between artist, audience and subject. 3) Students will be asked to compare these two paintings to the most recent swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. Students will be asked to articulate what makes the paintings and the magazine photos voyeuristic and gratuitous. They will weigh this question: are the artist and the audience as exposed as the subject when the human form is idealized?

__Assignment__: Students will make an inventory of the images that suggest a sexualization of sport in the latest Gatorade G2 "That's G" advertisements. They will consider how the medium creates a multi-modal message that is visceral and cerebral simultaneously. They will consider what this commercial says about the culture of sport as we near the sesquecentennial anniversary of the Champion Single Sculls. media type="youtube" key="DwhTYFwfACA" height="340" width="560" Muscle memory makes performance automatic for professional athletes. Some observers have argued that the real athlete no longer feels: he or she only does. The focus that the athlete hones shields her/him from distraction encourages equanimity and poise irrespective of the outcome of the contest. 1) Students will compare the dispassionate cruelty of //The Gross Clinic// by Thomas Eakins to the brute exercise of force in //A Knock Down// by George Bellows. 2) Students will consider the violence that the observer imagines and compare it to the violence actually depicted in both paintings. The Johnson/Jeffries fight in particular triggered days of racial riots after"The Great White Hope" succumbed to Johnson's pugilistic fury.Background information changes the vantage point of the observer 3) Students will consider the level of violence condoned by the audience to the level of violence expected in sports (particularly contact sports). Students will discuss the expressions of the spectators in //Salutat// by Thomas Eakins and consider the Latin gadiator's motto that inspired its title (morituri te salutamus Caesare...we who are about to die salute you Caesar)
 * Day 3: The Cruelty of the Professional**

__Assignment__: Students will write a short paragraph contrasting the violence of contact sports to the crucifixion of sculling where every muscle in the body is pushed to the limit and the athlete visits upon himself or herself a disciplined but masochistic scourge. Students will answer the question: Is there such a thing as a bloodless sport.


 * Day 4: John Biglin in a Single Scull**

This final day of discussion will culminate in an in-depth examination of the Picturing America reproduction of //John Biglin in a Single Scull//. The themes discussed during the first three days will be applied to this portrait. Students will strive to articulate a language for the skill of the master sculler. They will appreciate the photographic symmetry of the portrait and review some of the sketches that Eakins drew to apply perspective to the oarsman's fateful trajectory in relation to the vanishing point of the horizon. Students will take note of the taut musculature of the athlete and compare it to the physique of the amateurs in //Business Men's Class// by George Bellows. Students will consider the following quote from __Rowing Against the Current: On learning to scull at forty__ by Barry Strauss: "Rowing was a blood sport in ancient Greece." Students will hear the story of Demokleides who died during one of the great battles of the Peloponnesian War. Strauss notes that the gravestonde of Demokleides is a reminder "that a rower risked a lot more than losing the victory wreath. His racing days might end with a 450-pound bronze ram smashing through the hull of his boat." (Strauss, 120-121). Students will discuss the effect of merging two media (watercolor and oil) and consider the preparatory work with pencil and stencils that allowed Eakins to achieve scientific precision. Students will assess the modernist elements within the portrait and create a rubric to disambiguate those elements that belong to Eakins the artist from those that are rightly attributed to Eakins the craftsman from those that can only be ascribed to Eakins the scientific maverick.