Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, Benton was heralded as one of the leaders of the Regionalist movement. Commissioned by New York City's innovative and progressive New School for Social Research, Benton's America Today murals joyfully celebrate an America before the full impact of the Great Depression had been realized. He was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, and part of his Navy work consisted of documenting the camouflage patterns on Naval vessels so that they could be identified and ensure that the camouflage was correctly painted. Standing in front of this monumental and brightly colored image, one senses the city humming and pulsating with new energy. Eight of the America Today panels depict life in different regions of the United States: the South, the Midwest, the West, and New York. Thomas Hart Benton (American, Neosho, Missouri 18891975 Kansas City, Missouri), Medium: Young Tom Benton grew up with an instinct for constituencies that led him to assess art on the basis of its audience appeal. Thomas Hart Benton, senator and representative from Missouri, was born near Hillsborough, the third child and eldest son of Jesse and Ann Gooch Benton. After dinner he went out to sign the painting. (233.7 297.2 cm)h: 92 in. Learn more about our exhibitions, news, programs, and special offers. This project is funded in part by a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant award. On January 19, 1975, Benton completed the mural. If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMAs collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations). Benton took a train from New York to New Orleans, then went north by towboat on the Mississippi River. Benton dropped out of high school at 17 and started working as a cartoonist for the Joplin American newspaper. After dinner on January 19, 1975 he told his wife that he was going to go in and sign it. The mural was commissioned in 1930 by the New School's director Alvin Johnson. Reflecting the values of the working class, the artist often focused his attention on the . There, he was introduced to the great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, the ex-pat novelist Gertrude Stein, modernist John Marin, and various other Americans who attended the local cafes. 2023 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved. On his return three year later, and after a brief attempt, to settle in Kansas City, the young man came to New York where he remained for 23 years. Thomas Hart Benton Birthday and Date of Death Thomas Hart Benton was born on April 15, 1889 and died on January 19, 1975. Benton, Thomas Hart - Encyclopedia of Arkansas The politician was an important advocate of the westward expansion of the United States, and he was also the first person to serve five terms as a senator and one of the few people to serve in the House of Representatives after having served as a senator. T.P., as he was called, was 83. One section of the murals depicted a Ku Klux Klan rally, illustrating the Klan's large social and political presence in Indiana (reportedly, in the mid-'20s, up to 40 percent of the state's native-born white men paid dues to the Klan). 4th St and Constitution Ave NW A Death a Day: January 19 | Thomas Hart Benton - Blogger Benton's rhythmic composition is evident in the undulating line made up of the six figures. Despite his popularity, some critics downplayed Benton's artistic talents, disapproving of his allegedly provincial aesthetics and subject matter and his unabashed rejection of abstraction. Mr. Benton was a painter of enormous talent who believed that only by turning art to meaningful subject matter could America have an art that was not a bald imitation of the symbolic and abstract paintings that were then the vogue in Europe. Date: 1975. Up until this time he had struggled to find an artistic identity. In 1973, at the age of 84, Thomas Hart Benton was asked to paint a mural for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. 6th St and Constitution Ave NW Benton was outspoken about his views on art and many other topics. Benton eventually went back to creating art that was representational when he returned to the United States. Benton was influenced early in his career by a sketching trip he took through northwest Arkansas in 1926. The undulating rhythm within Pollock's early abstract works, emanating from a central vortex, relates back to lessons taught by Benton. Although the artist received no fee for his work on commission, he was "paid" with free eggs, the yolks from which he created the egg tempera paint. Benton himself was an amateur musician. (233.7 297.2 cm)g: 92 in. His fluid, sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States. Another famous Regionalist painter was Grant Wood, famed for the painting American Gothic. In fact, one of his last murals was The Sources of Country Music for the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, which he was working on when he died. The advent of Abstract Expressionism has all but eclipsed Benton's importance in the history of modern art. Among the vignettes depicted are a barn dance, women singing church music, a white woman with a dulcimer who sing Appalachian ballads, an African American man strums the banjo. was born in New York city on Dec. 1,. 2012.478aj. After residing for more than fifty years in the boardroom of the New School, America Today proved difficult for the school to maintain in perpetuity. Thomas Hart Benton - 61 artworks - painting - WikiArt.org He decided to travel around the country to capture the daily life of Americans at work and play. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/499559, New School for Social Research, New York (193182; unveiled January 1, 1931; sold in May 1982 to Maurice Segoura Gallery); [Maurice Segoura Gallery, New York, 198284; sold on February 1, 1984 to Equitable Life]; The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States (now AXA), New York (19842012; their gift to MMA). His father named him for his own great-uncle Thomas Hart Benton, who was one of the first two senators from Missouri when it became a state. (233.7 341.6 cm)d: 92 in. Benton, Thomas Hart | NCpedia Thomas Hart Benton Family Tree. In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Benton decided to paint large-scale propagandistic paintings to awaken Americans to the evils of fascism. Senator Thomas Hart Benton wrote 'Manifest Destiny' where he envisioned his Families Legal Firm taking over China, and, white men siring half-breeds by Chinese women, in order to make a new breed of men that will Go West, into Russia. Offering a panorama of American life throughout the 1920s, America Today is a room-sized mural comprising ten canvas panels. It was Thomas Hart Benton's world toothis restless man first visited the island in 1920, with his wife-to-be, Rita, and they spent nearly every summer there until his death in 1975, easily . Missouri native Thomas Hart Benton painted America Today to adorn a boardroom on the third floor of the New School for Social Research, a center of progressive thought and education in Greenwich Village, New York. Benton died in . Workers and labor fascinated many artists and photographers throughout the 1920s, including Lewis Hine (MMA 1987.1100.119) and James Lesesne Wells (MMA 1999.529.173). The regionalists art mirrored what the majority of Americans had in mind America itself. Benton settled in New York City upon his return in 1913, the same year as the famed Armory Show. Thomas Hart Bentonpainter, muralist, and writer from Missourideveloped, along with artists Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, a style of painting in the 1920s that became known as regionalism. An Artist In America. Mr. Benton's view was highly personal, steeped in the lore of the country from his birth. The controversy, fed by the artist's pugnaciousness, brought him recognition, and his career began to flower. Benton expansive murals, along with those of Jos Clemente Orozco, may have influenced the large scale of Pollock's later drip paintings. While his subjects were primarily based in America's heartland, he lived in New York City for twenty years. He died at the age of eighty-six in Kansas City, Missouri where he lived. M. E. was a lawyer and served as a congressman from 1897 until 1905. Egg tempera and oil on canvas - California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA. (Benton had earlier worked in the film industry as well.) Thomas Hart Benton, who in the late nineteentwenties and thirties boldly painted realistic portraits of American life that stirred considerable controversy, died last night at a hospital in Kansas City, Mo, He was 85 years old. Thomas Hart Benton Paintings, Bio, Ideas | TheArtStory He sketched farmers working in their fields, church meetings, boys swimming, children in schoolhouses, and life around the town square. "These people were all around the Quarter," Benton wrote in his memoirs, "but I shied away from them for I soon discovered they were all more talented and capable than I. The artist vividly recalled accompanying his father, Maecenas E. Bentona four-term U.S. congressman, on campaigns through rural Missouri. Scenes of American Life: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum commemorates Treasures to Go, a series of eight exhibitions from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, touring the nation through 2002. Distemper, egg tempera, and oil glaze on linen - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY. During this period, Benton painted July Hay (MMA 43.159.1), a work that reflects his admiration for the sixteenth-century Netherlandish artist Pieter Bruegel (MMA 19.164). If you can, provide 1-2 sources of information backing up this correction. After appearing on the cover of Time magazine in 1934, Benton left New York and settled in Kansas City, Missouri the following year. Jackson Pollock See all media Born: January 28, 1912 Cody Wyoming Died: August 11, 1956 (aged 44) East Hampton New York Notable Works: "Blue Poles" "Mural" Movement / Style: Abstract Expressionism Action painting automatism modern art Notable Family Members: spouse Lee Krasner See all related content Recent News Jun. Edward Alden Jewell. To find out more, including which third-party cookies we place and how to manage cookies, see ourprivacy policy. His father was Maecenas Benton, a four-term Congressman from the Show Me State with the nickname the little giant of the Ozarks. In his obituary, The New York Times noted that the Benton family was to Missouri what the Cabots are to Boston.. In his paintings and prints, Benton was devoted to the evocations of sound and music as a method of communication. In 1925 the New York Art Students League hired Benton as an instructor, a post he held for ten years. After two years at the Art Institute, in 1909, he chose the familiar path traveled by numerous other American artists and relocated to Paris to study at the famed Academie Julian. BENTON, Thomas Hart, (father-in-law of John Charles Frmont, brother-in-law of James McDowell, great-uncle of Maecenas Eason Benton), A Senator and a Representative from Missouri; born at Harts Mill, near Hillsboro, N.C., March 14, 1782; attended Chapel Hill College (University of North Carolina); admitted to the bar at Nashville, Tenn., in 1806 and commenced practice in Franklin . BENTON, Thomas Hart | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives When a tribute gift is given the honoree will receive a letter acknowledging your generosity and a bookplate will be placed in a book. Perhaps in reaction to his diminished spotlight, Benton was quite brash and vocal in his negative assessments of museums and their staffs, which only served to further ostracize him from the New York art world. Export from an artist page includes image if available, biography, notes, and bibliography. Regionalist art. His rapid compositional shifts in depth between the foreground and deep background recall cinematic effects. 9 ft. 9 in. 9 ft. 9 in. Benton painted Cotton Pickers, Georgia (MMA 33.144.2) from the studies that he made during a trip through Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia in the summer and fall of 1926. Based upon a popular folk song that Benton felt was representative of Missouri lore and mythology, the tale of Frankie and Johnny might have in fact concerned an incident. Elements of Synchromism - the musical characteristics of color - are evident such as the radiant layered halo connecting the man and wife in the background, which suggests music resonating. At first glance, Thomas Hart Benton (1889- 1975) and Jackson Pollock (1912-56) make an odd pair. Benton applied wood molding to the canvas to separate one vignette from the other, which gives a modern, cinematic quality to the overall composition. born Neosho, MO 1889-died 1975 Kansas City, MO. Among his admirers was Harry S. Truman, who kept a close eye on his work and progress and once called Mr. Benton the best damned painter in America.. It was the untutored art lovers who loved Mr. Benton's work the most, with its vigorous strokes and vivid colors, and toward the end of his life a painting of his would fetch up to $25,000. He continued north from Little Rock, hiking fifteen to twenty miles per day, until he reached the Buffalo River area. Known as the Indiana Murals, Indiana wanted to portray the social and industrial history of the state, but instead, one of Benton's depictions caused outrage because it was a bit too honest. A national membership group of museum friends who share a love of American art and craft. Major support provided through a partnership with the Arkansas Department of Parks & Tourism. After the war Benton went back to New York, and in 1922 he married Piacenza. He also studied in Paris, lived in New York City for more than 20 years and painted scores of works there, summered for 50 years on Martha's Vineyard off the New England coast, and also painted scenes of the American South and West. Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock and the Friendship That Changed Art For the mural, Benton chose a theme from Greek mythology, the story of Achelous and Hercules, which he found in Bulfinch's Mythology - a book that recounted classical myths and stories from . Thomas H. Benton Born Neosho, Missouri, United States Died Kansas City, Missouri, United States Active in New York, New York, United States Nationalities American Biography An American scene painter who, along with John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood, was a leading regionalist painter of the 1930s.

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