Thomas Hart Benton Essay Example for Free

Thomas hart Benton EssayDescribed by former U.S. President Harry Truman as the best painter in the estates, Thomas hart Benton guide a new art movement in the terra firma in an era when modernism and synopsis art were in vogue.Benton, the scion of a famous political family in Neosho, Missouri, is one of the widely recognized normal artists in the United sound outs1. Despite his diminutive five-feet three stature and fiery temper, Benton was a man of wide talents for he was not just a painter he was as well as 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 great-nephew of a senator, Bentons father wanted him to get involved in law or regime. hardly small Benton showed early on remarkable skills in art, which his mother encour get ond and supported. Despite oppositions from his father, Benton pursued his artistic inclinations. At a young age, he worked as a cartoonist for Joplin (Missouri) A merican in 1906.After that, he was direct to a military school by his father, but was later allowed to leave and study at the trick contribute 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. piece in Paris, works of Michelangelo and El Greco taked lasting impact on Benton2.In Selden Rodmans Fighter and Artist article, he described Bentons life in Paris as the unhappiest in the artists course. He didnt have an audience for his work and somehow lost the readiness for making art a performance. His mother came to Paris and brought Benton kinsfolk with her, a move that proved blushful for back in America, the artist found his art again. _____________ discern M. Johnson, On the Road with Thomas hart Benton Images of a Changing America (1999) 17.Ibid, 19.Upon his return, Benton went to saucily York a nd continued moving-picture show. He experimented and studied the arts of the old get the hang as well as various modern styles. Before finding his niche in the arna of art, Benton was generally considered a modernist who dabbled in modern approaches like Cezannism the dowery of repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes, and Constructivism the use of industrial, angular approach with geometric abstraction3. Among the modernist movements, he was curiously drawn towards synchromism, a painting technique that treats colorise the same way a composer arranges notes in music with advancing and reducing hues. This was in part by dint of 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 drawer 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 o f 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 cardinal-five of Thomas Hart Bentons works.After the Navy, Benton held a direction send out 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 payoff of the talks he had with his father and other family friends, Bentons heart was filled with a desire to recapture the realness he knew as a child._____________Greta Berman, Thomas Hart Benton. Art Journal 1990 199Barbara Herberholz, Thomas Hart Bentons home and studio, Arts Activities 2000 40Ibid, 40.3RegionalismOnce he found the right medium for his art, Thomas Hart Benton embarked on a naturalistic and representational style of painting a school of art cognize 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 lots 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 granger held the artists sympathy and was frequently 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 convocation comprised of geographic and cultural regions with distinctive characteristics (20).Benton was unique in trying to record history through his works. want a historian, he wanted to capture and preserve the distinct traits of regi onal life in the country before technological advancements and modernization will lay claim on the America of his youth. Benton was a opthalmic witness at a time when the United States was transitioning from being an agricultural country to one that embraces industrialization.Bentons paintings were often make realistically in a down-to-earth style so that the ordinary people could image their meanings contrary to abstract art that requires in-depth analysis and interpretation. He preferred for his works to be hanged in saloons for the viridity people to see and admire them (Johnson 20).4Rise to FameAlthough Thomas Hart Benton became well make outn 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 monolithic scale can be attributed to a numbe r of factors. Bentons early life experiences included viewing of ample murals at federal g overnment 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 vastness of the works created by Michelangelo and El Greco through their tremendous size. Through sheer size of an artwork, Benton dis galloped that viewing audience 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 langua ge of form.But according to Berardi, the about likely reason for the artists decision to take up mural painting was the stopping point 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) 19.5In 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 dissolvent of his wanderings in the quest to gain more knowledge and experiences in life. To make up for lost time, Benton travelled around the country to make sketches of things he saw and knew. He visited places w here 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 deoxycytidine monophosphate of Progress Exhibition in Chicago, Illinois. Benton wasnt paying(a) 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 utilize 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 un veiled at the height of the Great Depression, giving them exalted 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 200Matthew Baigell with Allen Kaufman, The Missouri Murals other notion at Benton, Art Journal 1977 314-315.6His 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 class in the Regionalist Movement in American art.In a span of five years, from 1930 to 1935, Benton created four coarse 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 Sch ool of Social Research The Arts of Life in America, his most controversial murals for The Whitney studio apartment 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 CareerThe 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. 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.htm7Bentons 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 N ashville, Tennessee unsigned.PaintingsBentons paintings generally display swirling bands of color, which speaks of synchromism, a technique adopted from the artists friend Macdonald-Wright, where hues of colour 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 44-478For his paintings, Bentons subjects are usually bold with strongly marked movements. The colors or flavor 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 lacuna. 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 rooter of Lone Green V alley, 1934, Oil TemperaBentons 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 char was depicted in a goddess-like manner.MuralsBentons 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 unite 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 resolve include American Historical Epic, The Arts of Life in America, and The Social History of Missouri.10 simply 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 historic value. His works were not just figments of his imaginations, but were the result of extensive research and travels.Works CitedBaigell, 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.htmBerman, Greta Berman. Thomas Hart Benton. Art Journal (1990) 199-201Herberholz, 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) 44-47Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site, 27 May 27 2005, 20 Nov. 2007http//www.mostateparks.com/benton/teachguide.htm