Professor Robert J DiYanniMichael DiYanni--son

Karen DiYanni--daughter

Professor Robert J DiYanni Robert DiYanni is Professor of English at Pace

University, Pleasantville, New York, where he teaches courses in literature, writing, and humanities. He has also taught at Queens College of the City University of New York, at New York University in the Graduate Rhetoric Program, and most recently in the Expository Writing Program at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Rutgers University (1968) and his Ph.D. from the City University of New York (1976).

Professor DiYanni currently works at College Board.

Thomas Eakins(July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916)

an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history.

John Canaday, art critic for The New York Times, in 1964

"As a supreme realist, Eakins appeared heavy and vulgar to a public that thought of art, and culture in general, largely in terms of a graceful sentimentality. Today he seems to us to have recorded his fellow Americans with a perception that was often as tender as it was vigorous, and to have preserved for us the essence of an American life which, indeed, he did not idealize--because it seemed to him beautiful beyond the necessity of idealization".

Status of Rowing

During the three years Eakins was abroad, competitive rowing on the Schuylkill River, which runs through Philadelphia, had become the city’s leading sport. In England, rowing had long been regarded as the exclusive activity of gentlemen, but in

Philadelphia anyone could take part, since rowing clubs made the expensive equipment available to all.

Schuylkill River (hidden river)a designated

Pennsylvania Scenic River

John Biglin in a Single Scull, ca. 1873Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916)

Watercolor on off-white wove paper 19 5/16 x 24 7/8 in. (49.2 x 63.2 cm)

Fletcher Fund, 1924 (24.108)

Proportion/Scale/ContrastA “Close-up” on the Muscle

Genre-crossing: portraiture/Landscape

Genre-Crossing often breaks new ground

Horace’s insistence on the purity of genres

the hierarchy of genres

Williams Shakespeare

Tragedy/comedy Comical relief in

tragedies

Mona Lisa, c. 1503–1506 Type Oil on Poplar

http://www.piffe.com/faces/monalisa.php

Though primarily a portrait, it also contains a background landscape.

This is called genre-crossing.

Something funny

In Memory of Thomas Eakins

In 1967 The Biglin Brothers Racing (1872) was reproduced on a United States postage stamp.

Although Thomas Eakins received little notice in his lifetime, he has come to be considered the greatest realist in the history of American art.

Price to Pay for his Artistic Pursuit

Eakins' treatment of the human body drew constant criticism.

Deeply affected by his dismissal from the Academy, Eakins's later career focused on portraiture. His steadfast insistence on his own vision of realism, in addition to his notoriety from his school scandals, combined to hurt his income in later years.

A Historical Approach in Michael DiYanni’s Essay

Portraiture was no longer en vogue with American artists, as landscape and genre paintings had surpassed them in popularity (160)

However, Thomas Eakins went against the trend. As a result, no more than 25 of his portraits were commissioned; yet still, he did not give up…

The Swimming Hole, 1884-5, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

The picture's powerful py’ramidal composition and sculptural conception of the individual bodies are completely distinctive pictorial resolutions.

The work was painted on commission, but was refused.

Significance

Taken en masse, the portraits offer an overview of the intellectual life of Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; individually, they are incisive depictions of thinking persons.

As well, Eakins produced a number of large paintings which brought the portrait out of the drawing room and into the offices, streets, parks, rivers, arenas, and surgical amphitheaters of his city.

The Gross ClinicOil on Canvas, 1875

Admired for its uncompromising realism, The Gross Clinic has an important place documenting the history of medicine—both because it honors the emergence of surgery as a healing profession (previously, surgery was associated primarily with amputation), and because it shows us what the surgical theater looked like in the nineteenth century.

Critical Reception Controversy about the painting has centered on its violence,

and on the melodramatic presence of the woman. Contemporary scholars have suggested that the painting may be read in terms of castration anxiety and fantasies of mastery over the body (e.g. Michael Fried), and that it documents Eakins's ambivalence about representing sex difference (e.g. Jennifer Doyle). The painting has also been understood to be drawing an analogy between painting and surgery and as identifying the work of the artist with the emergence of surgery as a respected profession.

Double Jump 1885 Study in human motionEakins has been credited with having "introduced the

camera to the American art studio"

Multiplication As an object moves, it sequentially

occupies multiple spaces. Visual multiplication helps capture such movement. The superimposed figures in Thomas Eakins' Double Jump record the multiple spaces the man occupies during this athletic event.

Multiplication As an object moves, it sequentially

occupies multiple spaces. Visual multiplication helps capture such movement. The superimposed figures in Thomas Eakins' Double Jump record the multiple spaces the man occupies during this athletic event.

Influenced by Eadweard Muybridge9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904

an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.

The zoopraxiscope

The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. Created by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, it may be considered the first movie projector. The ‘zoo’praxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion.

Zoopraxiscope dischttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoopra

xiscope

Galloping horsehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadwear

d_Muybridge

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Muybridge_race_horse_animated.gif

Muybridge sequence of a horse jumping

Worksheet (1)Forster’s Example (146)

The relationship between the quote and the essay—thematic summary/capstone/harmoneous

Exercise on summary A summary, synopsis, or recap is a shorter

version of the original. Such a simplification highlights the major points from the much longer subject, such as a text, speech, film, or event. The purpose is to help the audience get the gist in a short period of time.

Content of a summary

A written summary starts with a lead, including title, author, text type, and the main idea of the text.

It has a clearly arranged structure and is written in a logical, chronological, and traceable manner. In contrast to a résumé or a review, a summary contains neither interpretation nor rating.

Worksheet (4) Metaphor— how literary reasoning works

“Carve out” is used as a metaphor. Metaphor is a comparison of two seemingly

unrelated elements (one more concrete than the other); a quality of the more concrete element is not literally present in the other element, but rather serves to bring attention to that shared quality as an idea, concept, or essence. --Frames of Mind, 720.

Footnotes/Endnotes Entrieshttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resourc

e/747/04/

See the MLA sample paper on class website (page 9)

In Microsoft Word, click References; then choose footnotes or endnotes;

Free Text; Offer source information on something: G. Wayne Miller. King of Hearts: The True Story

of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery. (New York: Times, 2000), 245.

Primary sources vs. Secondary Sources

Primary sources refer to the original works of an artist, writer, poet, etc.;

Secondary sources refer to works that interpret/comment on the original works.