The Swimming Hole is an 1884–85 painting by the American artist Thomas
Eakins, Goodrich catalog #190, in the collection of the Amon Carter
Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Executed in oil on canvas, it depicts six
men swimming naked in a pristine lake. The Swimming Hole is regarded as
a masterpiece of American painting. According to art historian Doreen
Bolger it is "perhaps Eakins's most accomplished rendition of the nude
figure", and has been called "the most finely designed of all his
outdoor pictures". Since the Renaissance, the human body has been
considered both the basis of artists' training and the most challenging
subject to depict in art, and the nude was the centerpiece of Eakins'
teaching program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In this
work, Eakins took advantage of an exception to the generally prudish
Victorian attitude to nudity: swimming naked was widely accepted, and
for males was seen as normal, even in public spaces. Eakins was the
first American artist to portray one of the few occasions in 19th
century life when nudity was on display. The Swimming Hole develops
themes raised in his earlier work, in particular his treatment of
buttocks and his ambiguous treatment of the human form. Such themes had
earlier been examined in his The Gross Clinic and William Rush, and
would continue to be explored in his paintings of boxers (Taking the
Count, Salutat, and Between Rounds) and wrestlers (Wrestlers). The
Swimming Hole has been "widely cited as a prime example of
homoeroticism in American art".
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swimming_Hole>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
456:
Magister militum Ricimer defeated Emperor Avitus at Piacenza and became
master of the Western Roman Empire.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricimer>
1813:
The Sixth Coalition attacked Napoleon and the First French Empire in
the Battle of Leipzig, the largest conflict in the Napoleonic Wars with
over 500,000 troops involved.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leipzig>
1843:
William Rowan Hamilton first wrote down the fundamental formula for
quaternions, carving the equation into the side of Broom Bridge in
Cabra, Dublin, Ireland.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/quaternion>
1978:
Karol Józef Wojtyła, a cardinal from Kraków, Poland, became Pope John
Paul II, the first non-Italian pope since the 16th century and the
first ever from a Slavic country.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II>
1995:
Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam convened the Million Man March
in Washington, D.C. in an effort to unite in self-help and self-defense
against economic and social ills plaguing the African American
community.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Man_March>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
catechumen (n):
A convert to Christianity under instruction before baptism; a young
Christian preparing for confirmation
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/catechumen>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat
falsehoods is with truth.
--William O. Douglas
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_O._Douglas>
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