Taking Lessons From a Bloody Masterpiece - The New York Times

I’ve become obsessed with Thomas Eakins’s “The Gross Clinic.” Let me show you why.

Maybe you’ve felt what I’ve felt lately: a certain skepticism of the idea of art as a source of solace. But who said art should be an escape, a comfort, a barbiturate? Art’s tougher and mightier than that — and for some of the greatest painters of the past, the stuff of art resided in the gory mess of real life. These last two months I’ve grown obsessed with one American painting: a bloody masterpiece of pain and healing, made in Philadelphia nearly a century and a half ago. Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) was still a young artist when he completed “The Gross Clinic,” an in-action, up-to-the-minute

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• Ashwin Reddy

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