Sport, medicine and art: The 'enchanted science' of the body in the works of Thomas Eakins

Abstract

The article analyzes representations of sport and medicine in the output of the American artist Thomas Eakins, one of the most influential and original in the United States during the transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is based on the presupposition that Eakins was able to translate esthetically a plethora of representations related to modernity, including the prelude to intimate relationships and, in an age still sui generis, the practice of sports, health and medicine, transmitted through the idea of a show. This study hopes to be one more contribution to the promotion of what we have called a social archeology of sports, a prospecting of its presence among social networks and webs.