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Home , Bennie Briscoe, Between Rounds, Dick Tiger, Gene Fullmer, Salutat, Taking the Count

RINGSIDENUMBER NINE SEATFALL/WINTER 2019 ★ ★ THE ART OF THE SWEET SCIENCE FAN MAN AN ORAL HISTORY

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★ NIGEL COLLINS: ARTIST ★ DON STRADLEY: BIRTH OF THE LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHTS ★ ★ ERIC RASKIN: SOUTHPAW STANCE ★ JASON LANGENDORF: THE FAN MAN FIGHT ★ ★ SHAUN ASSAEL: SONNY LISTON IN ★ ED GRUVER: ON THE WATERFRONT ★ ★ EDDIE GOLDMAN: RUIZ vs JOSHUA II ★ CROWD PLEASERS: DAVID TUA ★ BOOK REVIEWS & MORE! ★ Sparring with Eakins The Outlaw Genius Who Painted Boxers By Nigel Collins

n order to be accepted as a student at the Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), applicants must submit a portfolio of their work. Among my offerings was a crude painting of fight- ing , copied from a Illustrated cover. Much to my surprise, I was accepted. IThe Academy was the first art school in the , founded by Charles Willson Peal and others in 1807, a venerable institution housed in a magnificent Victorian building designed by Frank Furness and George Hewitt. It is now a National Historic Landmark. Many famous artists have studied there, including filmmaker and multi- media artist David Lynch, of Twin Peaks and Mulholland Dr. fame. He left in 1963, and I arrived in 1964. It wasn’t much of tradeoff. Compared to Lynch, you could fit my artistic talent into a cocaine spoon. There was only one guy among the hundreds of students with whom I occasionally talked boxing. He was quite a bit older than most of us, smoked Pall Malls, and looked more like a factory worker than art student. On rare nights when I stayed late after school, somebody would usually ask if I was going to the fights. They knew about my guilty pleasure, and “There is too much of most seemed repulsed and curious in equal measure. But they didn’t judge. Art students are generally a tolerant lot, crazy but tolerant. this common, ordinary I would ride the El from Center City Philly to 46th and Market, a block away from the Arena, a rundown relic, built in 1920, that was work. Respectability in once the jewel of the city’s entertainment venues. There were folks selling bean pies, incense, and copies of Muhammad Speaks along the way. The TV art is appalling.” studio that hosted American Bandstand was on the same block, always shut- tered and locked, well before fight time. –Thomas Eakins

“Between2 Vol. Rounds” 3 I No. (1898-99)1 by Thomas Eakins, oil on canvas. Vol. 3 I No. 1 3 SPARRING WITH EAKINS

Eakins’s most malicious detractor was his brother-in-law, Frank Ste- vens, who accused him of bestiality, but provided no proof. Who knows what’s true and what’s not? Does it even matter? Art- ists living eccentric and often selfish lives are pretty much the norm. The truth is that in the long run it’s the art that really matters, not the person who created it. Like boxers, artist sacrifice body and soul in pursuit of their aspirations. They couldn’t stop if they wanted to. Eakins was famously forced to resign from the Academy in 1886 because he removed the loincloth of a male model in a class that included female students. It was the first thing you heard about him at PAFA, which was usually delivered with a salacious grin. He was our very own antihero. Being booted out of the Academy was a stunning blow for Eak- ins, cutting off a regular salary and access to the patronage of afflu- ent society. Critics, keen to curry favor with the art establishment, either ignored or denigrated his work. Disappointed but unbowed, Eakins pressed on with his work and, as the end of the drew near, he returned to the subject of the male figure, which included his boxing painting. “Thomas Eakins was quite open about his interest in prizefights, and, with his friend, sportswriter Clarence Cranmer, regularly attended the amphitheater of the , which was on the other side of Broad Street from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,” writes Kasia Boddy in her comprehensive tome, Boxing: A Cultural History. It was, of course, an earlier manifestation of the Philadelphia Arena, at a different location, than the one where I first saw Gypsy “Self Portrait” (1902) by Thomas Eakins, oil on canvas. Joe. Although Eakins and I were born more than a hundred years I couldn’t afford to attend as often as I would have liked, but apart, I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to sit next I managed to see Gypsy Joe Harris fight a couple of times while to him at a fight. attending PAFA. He was on the verge of stardom at the time, already Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, author of The Revenge of Thomas Eak- recognized as a unique talent. His career was short, but at his best ins, wrote that according to Cranmer, “Eakins attended nearly three Gypsy Joe was boxing’s Miles Davis, a one-eyed improvisational hundred fights by the end of the century, and he grew to be such a genius -- the likes of which I’ve never seen before or since. perceptive spectator that Cranmer did not hesitate to ask his opin- My knowledge of was rudimental when I enrolled ion of a fighter’s ability.” at PAFA, but I knew Thomas Eakins was a big deal, a celebrated “The charged atmosphere of the arena inspired Eakins’s final artist whose legacy was forever intertwined with the Academy’s. series of paintings of athletes,” wrote Alice A. Carter in her book, He’d been dead for more than a century by then, but people there The Essential Thomas Eakins. “These complex canvases tested Eak- sometimes talked about him as if he were still alive. Despite all the ins’s knowledge of anatomy and perspective, and demanded his full animosity between the school and the artist during his lifetime, the concentration.” Academy was eager to embrace him and his work. Reproductions of his paintings of scullers on the Schuylkill River were the first to catch my eye. Next was a grand revelation: Eakins ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ painted boxers. Maybe the Eakins-boxing connection nudged PAFA’s selection Eakins was famously forced to resign from committee in my direction when they saw my amateurish attempt to duplicate a magazine cover. I can’t think of any other reason they the Academy in 1886 because he removed allowed me to set foot in the joint. In his time Eakins had been a student, a professor and eventually the loincloth of a male model in a class that the director of PAFA. He was an innovator, on the cutting edge of representative painting, ahead of his time in both his own work and included female students. It was the first controversial teaching techniques. He was the bad boy of art who thing you heard about him at PAFA, which was looked up the skirt of Victorian morality and saw she wasn’t wear- ing underpants. usually delivered with a salacious grin. Eakins’s bohemian lifestyle went against the grain of the snooty moneyed class. He was accused of being a homosexual, seducing He was our very own antihero. two nieces (one of whom committed suicide) and having a ménage á trois with his wife, Susan, and his childhood friend, Addie Williams. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

4 Vol. 3 I No. 1 SPARRING WITH EAKINS

“” (1898) by Thomas Eakins, oil on canvas.

Vol. 3 I No. 1 5 SPARRING WITH EAKINS

“” (1899) by Thomas Eakins, oil on canvas.

Eakins created three major boxing paintings over the ropes is Ellwood McCloskey, his manager. in 1898 and 1899. He approached the subject The ring lights guide the eye down from the towel from a different point of view than George Bel- to the illuminated boxer, then on to the white collar lows, America’s other great boxing painter, who and cuffs of the timekeeper, finally coming to rest on depicted fighters in action. the man’s polished black shoes. Four men suspended “Eakins was uninterested in painting boxers in time, connected by light. exchanging blows,” wrote Boddy. “His paintings In the darkened area beyond the ring stands a explore the moments within a fight when the action policeman and further back is an elevated press box, stops (Taking the Count and ) and where several reporters are scribbling notes. Up in the moment when it’s all over ().” the balcony fans can be seen peering down, waiting Two of the paintings, Between Rounds and for the next round to start. A white-bearded gentle- Salutat, are considered among Eakins’s best man in the front row is probably poet , works. Both feature local featherweight “Turkey whose portrait Eakins painted in 1888. Point” Billy Smith, who, along with other box- The setting is a Gilded Age rendering of the Blue ers, Eakins befriended. Horizon, Philadelphia’s iconic 20th-century boxing Between Rounds, which hangs in the Phila- venue. I can almost imagine sitting in the balcony with delphia Museum of Art, has always been my the poet and rest of the rouges’ gallery, hollering encour- favorite. Smith is seated on his stool, leaning agement and advice — the way I did in the years before back against the corner post, his gloved hands the decorum required of the media muffled the fun. holding the top rope, as Bill McCarney, Smith’s Salutat features Smith, his right arm raised in victory, second, fans him with a towel. The man leaning “Turkey Point” Billy Smith facing the cheering spectators, including Crammer (wav-

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“Salutat” (1898) by Thomas Eakins, oil on canvas. Vol. 3 I No. 1 7 SPARRING WITH EAKINS ing his hat) and the artist’s father (on the far right). Eakins carved the Eakins, age 71, died on June 25, 1916, at his home at 1729 words dextra victrice conclamentes salutat (the right hand of the victor Mount Vernon Street. salutes those acclaiming him) into the original frame. “He was a silent man, not sad exactly, but disappointed—he had “While [Smith’s] chiseled white body evokes classical sculpture, some blows. There was a sadness underneath; he had not been able to his tanned face and hands remind us that he is a working class do what he wanted to do,” said his widow Susan in 1933. American boy,” wrote Boddy. “The victorious boxer’s body, and in It was more than 50 years after his death that Eakins’s unique contri- particular his musculature, is highlighted by bright electrical light, bution was fully appreciated. He would be flabbergasted to learn that in but the painting seems equally interested in celebrating his intimate 2006 his , a portrait of Dr. Samuel S. Gross performing involvement with the spectators. , sold for $68 million dollars. “Although a contemporary reviewer complained that these men “Today, the sound and the fury that surrounded Thomas Eakins are brought ‘so far forward as to give the impression that both vic- is forgotten,” wrote Carter, “and his legacy is just what he would tor and audience might shake hands,’ this seems to be one of the have hoped for had he dared to hope in those final years: a priceless painting’s greatest strengths.” heritage of luminous canvases celebrated for their uncompromising This rings true to anybody who has attended a boxing match. honesty, skill, originality, and beauty.” Idolatry often overrides societal norms. Fans reach out to touch fighters during their ring walk and leave their seats to congratulate I left the Academy knowing that I had no future as a painter, or console them afterward. Actor Dustin Hoffman recalled seeing but continued to hang out with my art school friends. Broke and an ecstatic fan “wiping all he could of the sweat from the boxer’s crashing on other people’s couches, I found part-time work posing body onto himself.” for students at PAFA. Salutat was Eakins’s final boxing painting. As usual the critics The female models posed naked, while the men were allowed picked it apart, but boxers loved his work. “Mr. Eakins, to me, was to wear jock straps. I’m delighted to report that no instructor ever a gentleman and an artist, and the realist of realists,” wrote “Turkey removed mine so that the female students could see the Full Monty. ★ Point” Smith, after he retired from boxing.

THE SPIT BUCKET Gorilla in the Bedroom There was no more boxing painting for me after the Tiger-Fullmer abomination, but shortly before I took my leave, a new stu- dent arrived at PAFA. His name was Tom Palmore, an Oklahoman, whose master- ful draftsmanship made him an immediate standout. Palmore soon gained local fame when his large painting of a gorilla seated on a pink, four-poster bed was hung on the wall of a trendy nightclub on Samson Street. “My paintings are about other earth- “Gorilla” (1982) by Tom Palmore. lings that we share this planet with and about our relationship with them. I care very much about the environment and about endangered species,” said Palmore, who’s still at it, and doing very well, thank you. During his time in Philadelphia, before fully focusing on the animal kingdom, Tom crafted several pieces featuring local boxers. Philly favorite Bennie Briscoe was the subject of a pencil drawing and a painting, which are now in the collections of pro- moter J Russell Peltz and his brother-in-law, Arnold Weiss, Briscoe’s manager. Palmore also painted a wonderful portrait of the Everett brothers, Tyrone and Tom Palmore’s illustration of Bennie Briscoe for the cover of Briscoe vs Marvin Hagler (1978) program. Mike, sporting two of the biggest Afros in Philly history. Years ago the painting was Courtesy of Russell Peltz part of an Art Museum’s exhibition of Philadelphia families. I have no idea what hap- pened to it afterward. There’s plenty of good boxing art, but it’s mostly of the commercial variety. Only a smidgen is museum quality. There will never be another Thomas Eakins, or even another Palmore for that matter. It’s time for a digital-age PAFA student to dive into the rich genre of boxing and perhaps create a new way to interpret the prize ring. As for me, I don’t even doodle anymore. –Nigel Collins

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“The Gross Clinic” (1875) by Thomas Vol.Eakins, 3 I No. oil 1on canvas.9