Thomas Hart Benton Essay Example for Free

Thomas Hart Benton Essay Described by former U.S. President Harry Truman as the best painter in America, Thomas Hart Benton led a new art movement in the country in an era when modernism and abstract art were in vogue. Benton, the scion of a famous political family in Neosho, Missouri, is one of the widely recognized popular artists in the United States1.   Despite his diminutive five-feet three stature and fiery temper, Benton was a man of enormous talents for he was not just a painter; he was also a writer and a musician, and a man well versed in the issues of his time. Being the son of a lawyer and congressman, and the grandnephew of a senator, Bentons father wanted him to get involved in law or politics.   But young Benton showed early on remarkable skills in art, which his mother encouraged and supported.   Despite oppositions from his father, Benton pursued his artistic inclinations.   At a young age, he worked as a cartoonist for Joplin (Missouri) American in 1906. After that, he was sent to a military school by his father, but was later allowed to leave and study at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1907.   After two years, he left for further studies in the Academie Julien in Paris, where he met fellow North American artists like Stanton Macdonald-Wright, whose leaning towards synchromism influenced Bentons art.   While in Paris, works of Michelangelo and El Greco created lasting impact on Benton2. In Selden Rodmans Fighter and Artist article, he described Bentons life in Paris as the unhappiest in the artists career.   He didnt have an audience for his work and somehow lost the knack for making art a performance.   His mother came to Paris and brought Benton home with her, a move that proved fortunate for back in America, the artist found his art again. _____________ Mark M. Johnson, On the Road with Thomas Hart Benton: Images of a Changing America (1999): 17. Ibid, 19. Upon his return, Benton went to New York and continued painting.   He experimented and studied the arts of the old masters as well as various modern styles.   Before finding his niche in the world of art, Benton was generally considered a modernist who dabbled in modern approaches like Cezannism the use of repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes, and Constructivism the use of industrial, angular approach with geometric abstraction3.   Among the modernist movements, he was particularly drawn towards synchromism, a painting technique that treats colors the same way a composer arranges notes in music with advancing and reducing hues.  Ã‚   This was in part through the influence of the modernist American painter, Macdonald-Wright, who Benton met in Paris and became his life-long friend. In 1919, he was employed as a draftsman for two years in the United States Navy, a move that significantly changed his style. During his navy stint, Bentons drawings and sketches were focused on realistic depictions of the work and life in shipyards4.   In his realist drawings, Benton found his medium, which he pursued with vigor throughout his life.   The Navy Art Collection has twenty-five of Thomas Hart Bentons works. After the Navy, Benton held a teaching post at New Yorks Chelsea Neighborhood Association, where he met his wife Rita Piacenza, an Italian immigrant who believed in his genius and remained with him until he died5. Bentons career shifted focus in 1924 when he went home to Missouri to reconcile with his dying father.   As a result of the talks he had with his father and other family friends, Bentons heart was filled with a desire to recapture the world he knew as a child. _____________ Greta Berman, Thomas Hart Benton. Art Journal 1990: 199 Barbara Herberholz, Thomas Hart Bentons home and studio, Arts Activities 2000: 40 Ibid, 40. 3 Regionalism Once he found the right medium for his art, Thomas Hart Benton embarked on a naturalistic and representational style of painting a school of art known today as Regionalism, a movement where the artist depicts what is around him, the things he knew and saw.   From then on, Benton branded himself an anti-modernist. As a Regionalist, Bentons subjects were often rural scenes from the Midwest whose themes were of self-preservation and hard work.   This change occurred at some point in Bentons life, but to pinpoint exactly when it happened is difficult. Benton enlarged the scope of his Regionalist art to include the working class.   The small farmer held the artists sympathy and was often portrayed in small-town scenes that speak of beauty coupled with melancholy and desperation.   According to Mark Johnson, the artist said in his autobiography that he looked on the United States as a group comprised of geographic and cultural regions with distinctive characteristics (20). Benton was unique in trying to record history through his works.   Like a historian, he wanted to capture and preserve the distinct traits of regional life in the country before technological advancements and modernization will lay claim on the America of his youth.   Benton was a visual witness at a time when the United States was transitioning from being an agricultural country to one that embraces industrialization. Bentons paintings were often done realistically in a down-to-earth style so that the ordinary people could understand their meanings; contrary to abstract art that requires in-depth analysis and interpretation.  Ã‚   He preferred for his works to be hanged in saloons for the common people to see and admire them (Johnson 20). 4 Rise to Fame Although Thomas Hart Benton became well known for his drawings, sketches, and easel paintings, it was in a different mode of expression that he attained fame and notoriety.   It was in his murals of tremendous proportions that Benton was catapulted to greatness, gaining him admirers and critics. How Benton became engrossed with murals of monumental scale can be attributed to a number of factors.   Bentons early life experiences included viewing of huge murals at federal government buildings in Washington D.C., where he spent a large part of his childhood. At some basic level, this seems to be the earliest foundation for his art6.   It could also be said that as a son of a political family, Benton had it in him to want to attract attention, a theory that is relatively weak.   When he studied art in Paris, he was once more struck by the magnificence of the works created by Michelangelo and El Greco through their tremendous size.   Through sheer size of an artwork, Benton discovered that viewers could be dazzled. Marianne Berardi discussed in an essay circumstantial and personal reasons that could have led Benson to pursue mural painting as a life long career.   One of these reasons was Bentons having read the illustrated copy of the History of the United States by J.A. Spencer, where he got the inspiration and the idea to express history through a modern language of form. But according to Berardi, the most likely reason for the artists decision to take up mural painting was the death of his father.   Benton alluded to this event in an autobiography he wrote in the years to come.   Colonel M.E. Benton became estranged from his eldest son over the latters choice of a career.   For more than a decade, they had very little communication.   Benton made peace with his ill and dying father in 1924.   Berardi cited Bentons 1938 memoir to support this. _____________ Mark M. Johnson, On the Road with Thomas Hart Benton: Images of a Changing America (1999): 19. 5 In his memoir, Benton described how the reminiscing talks he heard from his fathers friends gave him the desire to know more of the America he knew as a child and had forgotten as a result of his wanderings in the quest to gain more knowledge and experiences in life.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   To make up for lost time, Benton traveled around the country to make sketches of things he saw and knew.   He visited places where he traveled with his father as a child.   Bentons sketches during these travels became his raw material for his murals. Bentons name became part of mainstream art by 1932 when he was asked to do a five-part series, the Arts of Life in America7 a depiction through murals of life in Indiana that were contributed to the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago, Illinois.   Benton wasnt paid for this work.   He only got reimbursement for his supplies.   Despite not getting paid for his labor, Benton benefited in different ways.   The murals caught the interests of people all around America due to Bentons representation of his subject using unflattering light.   Also, among his subjects was the controversial Ku Klux Klan in its finery. The murals occupied four huge wall panels and four around the ceiling8.   While the murals were about music, games, dance, and sports, they were also about regional diversity, unemployment, crime, and politics.   The murals were unveiled at the height of the Great Depression, giving them high social relevance.   In the treatment of his subjects, Benton showed informed understanding of his time.   This is not surprising given Bentons views and opinions regarding society and politics in America during that period. _____________ Greta Berman, Thomas Hart Benton. Art Journal 1990: 200 Matthew Baigell with Allen Kaufman, The Missouri Murals: Another Look at Benton, Art Journal 1977: 314-315. 6 His controversial murals cinched Bentons fame.   In fact, because of his work, he found himself in the 1934 cover page of Time magazine, first time that an artist was given such an honor.   From then on, Benton became the leading figure in the Regionalist Movement in American art. In a span of five years, from 1930 to 1935, Benton created four enormous mural paintings, usually using the egg tempera technique that produces smooth and matte surfaces. Bentons murals during this period were: America Today, commissioned in 1930 for the New School of Social Research; The Arts of Life in America, his most controversial murals for The Whitney Studio Club Mural, which was shown to the public in 1932; A Social History of Indiana, made for the State of Indianas pavilion at the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair, and A Social History of Missouri, created between 1935 and 1936 for the House Lounge in the Missouri State Capitol Building, Jefferson City. Teaching Career The mural commission in 1935 for the House Lounge in the Missouri State, plus an art teaching position in the state decided Benton to leave the New York art scene, where heated artistic debacles abound9.  Ã‚   Thomas Hart Benton left New York, his residence for more than twenty years to take up a teaching position at the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri.   This move was probably made to reconnect with the world of his childhood, where he left many years ago.   This also gave Benton more chances of seeing rural America, which was then giving way to modernization. _____________ Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site, 27 May 27 2005, 20 Nov. 2007 http://www.mostateparks.com/benton/teachguide.htm 7 Bentons teaching career at the Art Institute ended when he was fired for making disparaging remarks about the influence of homosexuals in Kansas Citys art industry.   Despite the setback, Benton remained popular until the late 1940s when Abstract Expressionism became the new fashion and eclipsed Regionalism. After his teaching career ended, Benton gave mural painting his full attention.   He created murals in public buildings like the Missouri State Capitol and the Harry S. Truman presidential library in 1960.   The work he did for the former president became the foundation of a friendship that lasted throughout their lives. On Jan. 19, 1975, Benton was working on the mural The Sources of County music when he passed away due to a heart attack.   The great Regionalist artist died with a brush in hand at the age of 85.   His last painting hangs in Nashville, Tennessee unsigned. Paintings Bentons paintings generally display swirling bands of color, which speaks of synchromism, a technique adopted from the artists friend Macdonald-Wright, where hues of colors are parallel to the notes in harmonies.   The artists favorite paint and paint technique is egg tempera. _____________ Selden Rodman, Fighter and Artist, National Review 1989: 44-47 8 For his paintings, Bentons subjects are usually bold with strongly marked movements.   The colors or tone contrasts are often intense.   Bentons subjects are often disproportionate, making them look like caricatures.   Despite the elongation of shapes in some instances, I still see that the overall effect still looked harmonious and balanced.   The artist often uses shades of blue and yellow to create space.   Yellow sometimes gave the paintings a weathered look, and could sometimes encourage a viewer to engage in melancholia, just like the painting below. The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley, 1934, Oil Tempera Bentons painting called Persephone attracted a great deal of criticism particularly from women.   The figure probably offended some critics and many women because of the pubic hair that Benton painted for the first time.   This painting, done in 1939, marked Bentons break from his usual satiric and cartoon-like style.   The use of color is vibrant and expressive, while womanhood was depicted in a goddess-like manner. Murals Bentons murals were usually modeled using clay as a preparatory tool.   He initially overcame the difficulty of organizing a large number of figures in a linear space using vignettes.   To separate one panel from another, he used actual moldings to create boundaries for the scenes. But this technique proved cumbersome.   Benton developed a more organized visual ordering without the use of molding.   According to Berardi, Benton combined scenes by themes and utilized vertical posts to allow the eye some rest when moving across the canvas, a formal technique that Benton described fully in his Mechanics of Form Organization article.   Bentons murals that employed this solution include: American Historical Epic, The Arts of Life in America, and The Social History of Missouri. 10   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Just like in his paintings, Bentons subjects in his murals are also bold with strongly marked movements.   The colors are also strong.   In his murals, the overall composition dominates the objects to create a sense of space.   The sharp images and the caricature-like quality create memory recall even when viewed only once. Bentons works inspire only love and hate and no in-betweens.   For my part, I love Bentons work not only for the artists skill but also for their significance and historical value.   His works were not just figments of his imaginations, but were the result of extensive research and travels. Works Cited Baigell, Matthew, with Kaufman, Allen. The Missouri Murals: Another Look at Benton, Art Journal (1977): 314-315. Berardi, Marianne. Thomas Hart Benton. Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc. (2000). 20 Nov. 2007 http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa573.htm Berman, Greta Berman. Thomas Hart Benton. Art Journal (1990): 199-201 Herberholz, Barbara. Thomas Hart Bentons home and studio. Arts Activities (2000): 40-49. Johnson, Mark M. On the Road with Thomas Hart Benton: Images of a Changing America. 1999: 17-50. Rodman, Selden. Fighter and Artist. National Review (1989): 44-47 Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site, 27 May 27 2005, 20 Nov. 2007 http://www.mostateparks.com/benton/teachguide.htm