BENTON, THOMAS HART 1889-1975

Painter

A Vision of America

The decade's best-known practitioner of Regionalist painting, Thomas Hart Benton's work was aimed, he said, at an audience which "was never subjected to the aesthetic virus." Benton, born in Neosho, Missouri, was the son of a populist congressman, Maecenas E. Benton. On the campaign trail with his father he grew comfortable in Washington salons as well as revival meetings. From a youthful career as a reporter and illustrator for a paper in Joplin, Missouri, he attended the Chicago Art Institute. He moved on to art school in Paris (1908-1911), where he found himself unimpressed by the contemporary artists he met—Diego Rivera, George Grosz, Wyndham Lewis. Between 1918 and 1924 Benton abandoned modernism in favor of what he termed Americanism—a depiction of what he saw as the American character: hardworking, nonintellectual people who sometimes fell prey to circumstance. However, his satiric paintings of American life continued to be influenced by the strong forms and sometimes random use of space characteristic of modernism. His "American Historical Epic," of which he completed eighteen of a planned seventy-five mural studies between 1921 and 1926, was representative of this transformation and led to the paintings which made him famous in the 1930s. His father's death from throat cancer in 1924 marked the beginnings of what were to be Benton's lifelong wanderings around the United States, journeys that provided him with his artistic inspiration. By 1929 he was exhibiting drawings which he grouped into four sets: Holy Roller Camp Meeting, Lumber Camp, King Cotton, and Coal Mines. These were all groups whose representation became emblematic of New Deal art. Although Benton lived in New York City for the first half of the 1930s, becoming known among colleagues for his gifts at self-promotion as well as his artistic talent, in 1935 he returned to Missouri to execute a mural in the state capítol—but not before circulating a farewell letter to New York in which he condemned the city as being overrun by Communists and homosexuals.

Regionalism

The title of the movement with which Benton, Grant Wood, and John Steuart Curry were most closely associated was taken, according to Benton, from the Agrarians—a group of southern writers including Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, and John Crowe Ransom—who in "turning from the over-mechanized, over-commercialized, overcultivated life of our metropolitan centers, were seeking the sense of American life in its sectional or regional cultures." However, there were major differences between the two: while the Agrarians eschewed city life, Benton painted factories as well as farms. He did not confine himself to a vision of a single region; rather, he was "after a picture of America in its entirety … I ranged north and south and from New York to Hollywood and back and forth in legend and history."

WPA Muralist

Along with Edward Laning, Reginald Marsh, Henry Varnum Poor, Boardman Robinson, and Maurice Sterne, Benton was instrumental in developing the Public Works of Art Project. His own mural contributions to public buildings across the country were often controversial: his 1936 Missouri State Capitol mural presented aspects of the state's history and legend that many citizens would rather had gone acknowledged. Mark Twain's Huck Finn and Jim; Frankie and Johnny, the doomed lovers celebrated in American folk song; and the outlaw Jesse James gazed down at visitors and aroused protests. In response to a museum director's criticism of his murals, Benton asserted, "If it were left to me, I wouldn't have any museums … Who looks at paintings in a museum? I'd rather sell mine to saloons, bawdy houses, Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, Chambers of Commerce, even women's clubs. People go to saloons, but never to museums."

Popularity

Although criticized by modernists for what they saw as his clichéd style and by radicals for an insufficient focus on themes of repression, poverty, and injustice, Benton was held in great public esteem and was perhaps the decade's most celebrated painter. He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1934 and was lauded in Life in 1937. In paintings such as "America Today—Changing West I" (1931), a representation of farms and factories; "I Got a Gal on Sourwood Mountain" (1938), its title derived from an Appalachian folk song; and in his 1939 lithograph "Planting," which depicted poor black farmers, Benton offered a mass audience a vision of American life that affirmed the worth of local expression and which was, for the most part, one of dignity even during times of struggle. Although his critical reputation has waxed and waned over time, his popularity continued unabated until his death, as evidenced by a 60 Minutes profile, several Life magazine pieces, and spreads in National Geographic and Sports Illustrated,

Sources:

Thomas Hart Benton, An American in Art (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1969);

Richard D. McKinzie, The New Deal for Artists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973);

Linda Weintraub, Thomas Hart Benton: Chronicler of America's Folk Heritage (Annandale-on-Hudson: Edith C, Blum Art Institute, Bard College, 1985).

Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) was one of the principal American regionalist painters of the 1930s. He imbued the subjects of his work, people of the small towns of the Midwest and South, with a crude, zesty vigor.

Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, the son and grandnephew of a United States congressmen. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1907, then traveled to Paris, where he spent five years observing new trends, familiarizing himself especially with cubism. Upon his return to the United States in 1912, he became a devotee of the synchromism advocated by his friend Stanton Macdonald-Wright. (Synchromism —"with color and sound"—was a nonobjective mode of painting, featuring intersecting planes. It was especially close to French orphism, a branch of cubism.) The work Benton submitted to the Forum Exhibition of American Painting of 1916 showed the influence of synchromism. But during most of this decade Benton was unable to resolve the conflicts he felt between nonobjectivity and realism in his painting. He later felt that the time spent in the Navy in 1918-1919 finally set him on his course toward an art devoted entirely to American subjects treated (he believed) in a realistic manner, devoid of traces of European avant-garde trends.

Murals Represented American Life

Between 1919 and 1924 Benton made studies for his projected series of mural decorations based on American history. From 1924 to about 1931 he traveled through the Midwest and the South, taking close note of the people he met and incorporating these observations in his paintings. Benton's murals generally show his overwhelming concern for the arrangement of figures and design, as in his paintings done in 1931 for New York City's New School for Social Research. In the New York murals a rhythmic movement sweeps through scenes of ordinary American folk shown purposefully at various activities—eating, dancing, or working. Benton's energetic, turbulent style is intended to suggest the vigor of the American people.

Benton produced a panorama of America's productive capacities in his scenes of mining, farming, and lumbering. He also painted scenes of burlesque houses, prize fights, and broncobusting, and he could capture the rapid, turbulent, and squalid growth of a boomtown. Occasionally he struck a poetic chord, as in his quiet scene of harvesting, July Hay (1943). Benton dealt with corruption, squalor, and inequality, but without the bitter indictments that are found in the work of such social realists as Jack Levine.

Benton wished to democratize art, to make it both intelligible and available to the general public (hence the large mural series). He planned a pictorial history of the United States in 64 panels, a project never completed. He was one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the major trend in American art during the 1930s—an art of a specifically American subject matter, done in a variety of naturalistic modes rather than in the European modernist styles of the previous decade.

Worked Throughout His Life

Benton continued to be productive well into his 80s. His portrait of Harry Truman, completed shortly before Truman's death, elicited this compliment from the equally earthy former president: "the best damned painter in America." Benton died in his studio on January 19, 1975, at the age of 85. He had just finished the basic work on a mural illustrating the origins of country music, commissioned by the Country Music Foundation in Nashville. The 100th anniversary of his birth was celebrated in 1989 at his home for 40 years, Kansas City. The festivities included a "bourbon bash" (which had become an annual event in honor of the rugged image the artist had fostered), as well as the opening of a national tour of his work and the premiere of a film biography.

Further Reading

An Artist in America (1937) is Benton's own colorful account of his long career. Thomas Craven, Thomas Hart Benton (1939), is an examination of the artist and his work. For background information see Oliver W. Larkin, Art and Life in America (1949; 2d ed. 1960), and John W. McCoubrey, American Tradition in Painting (1963).

Additional Sources

Adams, Henry, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original (1989).

Dictionary of American Biography (supplement 9, 1971-1975, Scribner's, 1994).

New York Times (January 20, 1975).

Davis, Douglas, "The Rugged American," Newsweek (February 3, 1975).

Robbins, William, "Museums Make Peace With an Artist's Vision," New York Times (April 13, 1989). □

Benton, Thomas Hart (1889–1975). American painter, the great-nephew of a famous American statesman of the same name. He was born in Neosho, Missouri, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1907–8, and at the Académie Julian, Paris, 1908–11. In Paris he became a friend of the Synchromist Stanton Macdonald-Wright, and after his return to the USA (he settled in New York in 1912) he painted in the Synchromist manner for some years. He exhibited in the Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters in 1916, but having failed to win success working in an avant-garde style, he abandoned modernism around 1920 and gained fame as one of the leading exponents of Regionalism and the chief spokesman for the movement. He claimed that the success enjoyed by himself, Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood came from the fact that they ‘symbolized esthetically what the majority of Americans had in mind—America itself'. Benton's style in his Regionalist work was richly coloured and vigorous, with restlessly energetic rhythms and rather flat, sometimes almost cartoonish figures. His work included several murals, notably scenes of American life (1930–1) at the New School for Social Research in New York. Their popularity encouraged government support for such wall paintings, although Benton himself never did any work for the Federal Art Project. In 1935 he left New York to become director of the City Art Institute and School of Design in Kansas City, Missouri, and he lived in that city for the rest of his life. He continued to paint murals as well as a variety of easel pictures, including landscapes, portraits, and a novel kind of work in which he introduced American types into representations of Greek myths or biblical stories (Susanna and the Elders, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1938).

Benton wrote numerous articles on art, many published in the University of Kansas's University Review, and he was the author of two autobiographies, An Artist in America (1937) and An American in Art (1969). A passage from the second shows how completely he turned his back on the modernism he had espoused in his youth: ‘Modern art became, especially in its American derivations, a simple smearing and pouring of material, good for nothing but to release neurotic tensions. Here finally it became like a bowel movement or a vomiting spell.’ In view of these words, it is ironic that Benton was influential on Jackson Pollock, whom he taught at the Art Students League of New York in the early 1930s.

Benton, Thomas Hart (b Neosho, Mo., 15 Apr. 1889; d Kansas City, Mo., 19 Jan. 1975). American painter, the great-nephew of a famous American statesman of the same name. In 1908–11 he lived in Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian and became a friend of the Synchromist Stanton Macdonald-Wright. After his return to the USA he settled in New York and painted in the Synchromist manner for some years, but having failed to win success working in an avant-garde style, he abandoned modernism around 1920 and gained fame as one of the leading exponents of Regionalism. His style became richly coloured and vigorous, with restlessly energetic rhythms and rather flat, sometimes almost cartoonish figures. His work included several murals, notably scenes of American life (1930–1) at the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1935 he left New York to become director of the City Art Institute and School of Design in Kansas City, Missouri, and he lived in that city for the rest of his life. When Regionalism declined in popularity in the 1940s Benton turned more to depicting scenes from American history, and some of his later work introduced American types into representations of Greek myths or biblical stories. Benton wrote two autobiographies, An Artist in America (1937) and An American in Art (1969). A passage from the second shows how completely he turned his back on the modernism he had espoused in his youth: ‘Modern art became, especially in its American derivations, a simple smearing and pouring of material, good for nothing but to release neurotic tensions. Here finally it became like a bowel movement or a vomiting spell.’ In view of these words, it is ironic that Benton was influential on Jackson Pollock, whom he taught at the Art Students League of New York in the early 1930s.

Benton, Thomas Hart (1889–1975). American painter, the great-nephew of a famous American statesman of the same name. In 1908–11 he lived in Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian and became a friend of the Synchromist Stanton Macdonald-Wright. After his return to the USA he settled in New York and painted in the Synchromist manner for some years, but having failed to win success working in an avant-garde style, he abandoned modernism around 1920 and gained fame as one of the leading exponents of Regionalism. His style became richly coloured and vigorous, with restlessly energetic rhythms and rather flat, sometimes almost cartoonish figures. His work included several murals, notably scenes of American life (1930–1) at the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1935 he left New York to become director of the City Art Institute and School of Design in Kansas City, Missouri, and he lived in that city for the rest of his life. When Regionalism declined in popularity in the 1940s Benton turned more to depicting scenes from American history, and some of his later work introduced American types into representations of Greek myths or biblical stories. Benton wrote two autobiographies, An Artist in America (1937) and An American in Art (1969). A passage from the second shows how completely he turned his back on the modernism he had espoused in his youth: ‘Modern art became, especially in its American derivations, a simple smearing and pouring of material, good for nothing but to release neurotic tensions. Here finally it became like a bowel movement or a vomiting spell.’ In view of these words, it is ironic that Benton was influential on Jackson Pollock, whom he taught at the Art Students League of New York in the early 1930s.

Thomas Hart Benton 1889–1975, American regionalist painter, b. Neosho, Mo.; grandnephew of Sen. Thomas Hart Benton and son of Congressman Maecenas E. Benton. In 1906 and 1907 he attended the Art Institute of Chicago and at 19 went to Paris, where he remained five years. On his return to the United States, he designed movie sets, managed an art gallery, and continued to paint. The best-known American muralist of the 1930s and early 40s, he executed murals for the New School of Social Research (later sold) and the Whitney Museum, both in New York City; the Missouri statehouse, Jefferson City, Mo.; and the Postal Service and Dept. of Justice buildings, Washington, D.C. He is noted for his dramatization of American themes. His style is graphic, strong in color, repetitious and insistent in the use of rhythmic line. July Hay (1943) is in the Metropolitan Museum. Benton taught painting at several colleges and art schools.

Bibliography: See his autobiographical An Artist in America (1951, rev. ed. 1968) and An American in Art (1969); K. A. Marling, Tom Benton and His Drawings (1985) and R. D. Hurt and M. K. Dains, ed., Thomas Hart Benton (1989).

Benton, Thomas Hart (1889–1975), grandnephew of the Missouri senator of the same name, had a deep sense of relation to the traditions of that state, where he was born and which he depicted in paintings and murals, such as those in the Truman Library. He wrote two autobiographies, An Artist in America (1937) and An American in Art (1969), and illustrated an edition of Grapes of Wrath.

Benton, Thomas Hart (1889–1975) US realist painter. Benton painted rural and small-town life in the USA. His work includes the murals in the New School for Social Research, New York City (1930–31), and The Arts of Life in America (1932, now in the Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut). Jackson Pollock was his most famous pupil.