Rural America in the paintings of the teacher Pollock, or what is the secret of the success of the inimitable Thomas Hart Benton

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Thomas Hart Benton was an American painter known for his distinctive, fluid painting style. He is considered one of the founders of American regionalism, along with Grant Wood and John Stuart Curry. Benton's paintings and murals are highly recognizable and capture the essence of American life. He favored a rural, midwestern theme, but also produced works featuring more urban scenes from his time in New York. Although he was mainly a regionalist artist, he also incorporated elements of synchronicity into his work and continued to create until the end of his days.

1. He was named after his grandfather

Thomas was named after his great-uncle, Thomas Hart Benton. Benton's father, Colonel Metzenas Benton, was also a Democratic politician and lawyer. He was elected representative of the United States four times, from 1897 to 1905. Thomas was well versed in politics since childhood, and his father always expected him to follow in his footsteps.

His mother, Elizabeth Wise Benton, was interested in art and culture, which allowed Thomas to explore his artistic ability at an early age. She enrolled him in art classes during their stay in Washington DC at the Corcoran Gallery. The lessons were based on drawing geometric shapes, which Benton found very boring. As a teenager, he worked as a cartoonist for the Joplin American newspaper.

2. Paris

In 1906, at the age of seventeen, Thomas dreamed of going to art school, but his father did not like this idea much, but nevertheless, he agreed to allow him to enter the Art Institute of Chicago if Benton finished one year at military school in Alton, Illinois. Thomas lasted three months. His father even received a letter from someone at school saying that this was not the right place for him. Thomas began classes at an art institute and found that he didn't fit in very well with other students.

As a result, he was expelled once for a fight in class. Soon after, he was accepted again, but the institute and studies quickly bored him, and he decided to continue his studies elsewhere. In 1908 he decided to move to Paris to study at the Académie Julien. Benton felt that the other artists he met at school treated him as a lower class, but that didn't stop him from enjoying time outside of school in the city of light. While in Paris, he witnessed the flowering of Fauvism and did not have any interest in it. This strengthened his determination to paint pictures of reality. He returned to his home state in 1911.

3. Unadorned

When America entered World War I, Thomas served as director of the People's Gallery and taught at the Chelsea Neighborhood Association in New York. He enlisted in 1918 and was sent to the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia. His job was to make drawings of what he saw around the base, allowing him to access many areas where he could observe people at work. He continued his dedication to realism and sought to show the working man without trying to idealize him. The watercolors he created while serving in the Navy have been exhibited at Daniel's galleries in New York. After being fired in 1919, he returned to New York.

4. Friendship with Jackson Pollock

While teaching in New York, young Jackson Pollock entered Thomas Hart Benton's class in 1930. They became friends when Benton took Pollock under his wing, teaching him classical painting that Pollock was not familiar with. Jackson witnessed the rise in Benton's popularity as more and more people began to pay attention to his work and even wrote to his father about it. Pollock spent a lot of time with the Benton family, even came to them on vacation in Martha's Vineyard. In 1934, Pollock posed for Benton's The Ballad of the Jealous of Lone Green Valley as a figure playing a lip harp.

Thomas eventually moved from New York to Kansas City, and Pollock began experimenting with abstraction, a style of art that Benton hated. As the popularity of regionalism waned, and interest in abstraction began to skyrocket, Pollock became one of the most famous American artists of the time, and Benton was pushed backstage. When asked about Benton's influence on him, Pollock claimed that the famous artist taught him something that he rebelled against.

5. School

In 1935, Thomas was invited to head the painting department at the Kansas City Art Institute. He agreed to this position and moved his wife and son from New York to Kansas City. The city and the school were delighted with his arrival. While teaching at school, he completed many masterpieces such as Hollywood and Persephone. These famous paintings by Thomas Hart Benton can be seen prominently at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. His time at school was short, only six years. In 1941, he was fired after he made several homophobic remarks about the staff of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which was closely associated with the Kansas City Art Institute. Despite being fired, he remained in Kansas City and continued to work there for the rest of his life.

6. Hollywood

In the 1930s, Thomas was approached by two major publications: Time magazine in 1934 and Life magazine in 1937. In 1934, Hart became the first artist to appear on the cover of TIME magazine. An article about him was titled "American Scene" and covered his involvement in the regional art movement. It was published on December 24, 1939. In 1937, Life magazine commissioned Benton for a large painting on the theme of Hollywood, even paying him a trip there in the summer of that year. His famous painting Hollywood was completed in 1938. When Life magazine first saw this work, they immediately disapproved of it and did not want to have anything to do with it, but the popularity of the work changed their mind, and they included it in the series about Hollywood. In 1969, Life magazine published an article by Michael McWhirter on the aging American artist.

7. Social history of Indiana

Thomas was commissioned to create a large mural for Indiana in 1932, and it was displayed at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. A Social History of Indiana consists of twenty-two large panels spanning a total of two hundred and fifty feet, representing Indiana, and for which he received a royalty of sixteen thousand dollars. He spent time traveling around Indiana interviewing state residents before embarking on a big project. Thomas was surprised to learn from the conversations that he did not expect, for example, about the fame of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana and the strike of miners called "Terre Hot".

He decided to include these things in his mural. The inclusion of the Ku Klux Klan and the strikers drew strong criticism when the mural was exhibited at the World's Fair, but that didn't stop it from becoming one of the most popular exhibits. Midwesterners were thrilled to see their reflection in art.

8. He created a mural for the Missouri State Capitol building

In 1935, he was commissioned to create a mural for the living room in the Missouri State Capitol Building. Like most of Thomas' other works, the mural was not free of public disapproval. This mural included figures from Missouri such as Jesse James, Frankie and Johnny from the popular song of the time, and Huckleberry Finn. One of the figures in his mural bore a resemblance to the infamous corrupt Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast. A few years after the completion of the mural, when Pendergast was arrested for tax evasion, someone took the liberty of adding his prison number on the back of the figure in question.

9. Music

Besides painting, one of Thomas's many passions was folk music. In 1933 he began learning to play the harmonica and read music. He even created a new tablature system for recording harmonic notation, which later became the standard. He traveled around the country a lot, making sketches and notes for various works. Thomas also loved playing music with his family and even recorded an album in 1941 called Saturday Night at Tom Benton's with his son, who played the flute. Therefore, the connection with music is evident in most of his paintings, and an impressive collection of folk albums and sheet music is still kept in his house.

10. House and studio

Thomas moved to his home on Bellevue Street in 1939 and lived there until his death. One of the most important components of the house was the carriage shed next to it. The piece was converted into a studio where he could work peacefully on his masterpieces. On the evening of January 19, 1975, Benton returned to his studio in the afternoon to continue the work he had begun. After a while, his wife Rita realized that her husband was working too late and went after him. Benton was dead, lying on the floor next to a chair facing his last mural.

The house and studio have survived as Benton left them in 1975. This property was declared a State Historic Landmark in 1977 and is administered by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Visitors can tour the house and studio and even grab a copy of Rita's famous spaghetti recipe. Many of his original paintings have survived to this day, and even some sculptures are scattered throughout the house.

Continuing the topic, read also about how paintings by many famous artists became part of haute couture, thereby forming a new style of the twentieth century.