Thomas Hart Benton (painter)

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Thomas Hart Benton, painter

Thomas Hart Benton, or Tom Benton (April 15, 1889 - January 19, 1975) was an American muralist of the Regionalist school. His fluid, almost sculpted paintings showed everyday scenes of the contemporary Midwest, especially bucolic images of pre-industrial farmlands.

[edit] Life and work

[edit] Early years

Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, USA into an influential clan of politicians and powerbrokers. Benton's father was a lawyer and United States congressman and his great-uncle was 19th century United States Senator from Missouri Thomas Hart Benton, after whom he was named.

Benton spent his childhood shuttling between Washington D.C. and Missouri. Benton rebelled against his grooming for a future political career, preferring to develop his interest in art. As a teenager, he worked as a cartoonist for the Joplin American newspaper, in Joplin, Missouri.

[edit] Training

In 1907 Benton enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, but left for Paris, France in 1909 to continue his art education at the Académie Julian. In Paris, Benton met other North American artists such as Diego Rivera and Stanton Macdonald-Wright, an advocate of Synchromism. Wright's influence gave a strong Synchromist leaning to Benton's work.

Benton returned to New York City in 1913 and continued painting. His work as a draftsman in the United States Navy in 1919 changed his style significantly. His artwork during his navy stint concentrated on realistic sketches and drawings of shipyard work and life—a change of focus that would continue throughout Benton's career.

People of Chilmark (Figure Composition), 1920, in the Hirshhorn Museum collection, Washington, D.C.

[edit] Regionalism

On return to New York in the early 1920s, Benton declared himself an "enemy of modernism" and began the naturalistic and representational work today known as Regionalism. Benton taught at the Art Students League, and was active in leftist politics. He expanded the scale of his Regionalist works, culminating in the America Today murals at the New School for Social Research in 1930-31. He was heavily influenced by El Greco and also taught Jackson Pollock.

In 1932 Benton broke through to the mainstream. A relative unknown, he was chosen to produce the murals of Indiana life that would become that state's contribution to the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago, Illinois. The Indiana Murals stirred controversy; Benton painted everyday people in an unflattering light, including Ku Klux Klan members in full regalia. The controversy landed Benton on the cover of Time magazine and made him a household name. The mural panels are currently displayed at Indiana University in Bloomington with the majority on display in the "Hall of Murals" at Indiana University Auditorium. Four additional panels are displayed in the former Univeristy Theatre which is connected to the Auditorium. The final two panels, including the most controversial panel, with images of the Ku Klux Klan, are located in Woodburn Hall.

On the cover of Time magazine: December 24, 1934.

[edit] Return to roots

In 1935 Benton left New York, where artistic debates were heated and endless, for a teaching job at the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City afforded Benton greater access to the rural America then disappearing. Benton's sympathy was with the working class and the small farmer, unable to gain material advantage despite the Industrial Revolution. His works often show the melancholy, desperation and beauty of small-town life. His most promising student at that time was Roger Medearis, a talented tempera painter; but Medearis' career was stunted by the later fashion for Abstract Expressionism fostered by a later Benton student.

Benton's students at the Art Institute included many of the future painters of the Midwest heartland. His most famous student, Jackson Pollock, whom he mentored in the Art Students League, would go on to found the Abstract Expressionist movement—wildly different from Benton's own style. Jackson Pollock often said that Benton's traditional teachings gave him something to rebel against. Pollock never gave up on the idea art needed impact on the audience, in this way he followed Benton. Benton's most famous student at the Art Institute was Jackson Lee Nesbitt. Though they were very different in age, Nesbitt and Benton were also friends who traveled and sketched together often -- and the art they created was very similar. When financial necessity caused Nesbitt to give up his art for a successful career in the advertising industry, Nesbitt did not speak with Benton for many years out of embarassment. Benton was dismissed from the Art Institute in 1941, but he remained in Kansas City until his death.

For the rest of his career Benton concentrated on murals in public buildings in the Midwest, such as the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. His work on the Harry S. Truman presidential library in 1960 initiated a friendship with the former U.S. President that lasted for the rest of their lives. Benton died in 1975 at work in his studio, brush in hand.

[edit] Romance in the America

A revival of all things distinctly American has sparked interest in the works of Thomas Hart Benton in recent years. His works are no longer relegated to back room exhibits, but have gained an audience refined in embracing the artist as a wholly accessible individual skilled in not only 'regionalism' but in poetic color and line combinations which simultaneously inspire and provoke. His art carries the past like no other media to the present day. Images of farmers working by hand in the fields, a lone cowboy standing by his run-down ranch, and a steam locomotive racing along side a horse are as American as one can imagine.

[edit] References

Henry Adams, An American Original; Thomas Hart Benton, An Artist in America; Thomas Hart Benton, An American in Art

[edit] External links

• Truman Museum and Library
• Parks, the Circus, the Klan, the Press in its Contexts from Indiana University
• The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, holder of the largest concentration of Benton's works, including his masterpiece Persephone