BIOGRAPHY
Born in southwest Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton attended the Art Institute of Chicago in 1907. In 1908 he went to Paris where he was deeply influenced by Stanton Macdonald-Wright. Returning to New York in 1912, he adopted Wright's theories in paintings like Constructivist Still Life: Synchromist Colour (1917). Around 1920, he abandoned Modernism, which he later opposed vehemently, and from 1924 traveled in the south and midwest recording rural, small town life. By 1929 he was associated with Grant Wood and John Curry as a Regionalist, extolling the virtues and values of non-metropolitan America. Like earlier generations of American social realists, Benton was anxious to democratize art and to this end conceived an ambitious pictorial history of the United States in 64 panels, sixteen of which were completed. However his desire for accessibility was achieved at the expense of subtlety, and his murals of contemporary America (1930–1; New York, School for Social Research), compartmentalized into irregular individual scenes, are only saved from banality by their raw energy. By the 1940s, his reactionary views increasingly isolated him.
Born in southwest Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton attended the Art Institute of Chicago in 1907. In 1908 he went to Paris where he was deeply influenced by Stanton Macdonald-Wright. Returning to New York in 1912, he adopted Wright's theories in paintings like Constructivist Still Life: Synchromist Colour (1917). Around 1920, he abandoned Modernism, which he later opposed vehemently, and from 1924 traveled in the south and midwest recording rural, small town life. By 1929 he was associated with Grant Wood and John Curry as a Regionalist, extolling the virtues and values of non-metropolitan America. Like earlier generations of American social realists, Benton was anxious to democratize art and to this end conceived an ambitious pictorial history of the United States in 64 panels, sixteen of which were completed. However his desire for accessibility was achieved at the expense of subtlety, and his murals of contemporary America (1930–1; New York, School for Social Research), compartmentalized into irregular individual scenes, are only saved from banality by their raw energy. By the 1940s, his reactionary views increasingly isolated him.
RESOURCES
1. Down by the Riverside
2. Achelous and Hercules
3. Down the River (The Young Fisherman)
4. Wheat
5. Works of art by Thomas Hart Benton in the Crystal Bridges Museum main collection:
The Steel Mill ; Tobacco Sorters ; Ten Pound Hammer ; Strike ; Slow Train Through Arkansas ;
Study for 'Slow Train Through Arkansas' ; Buffalo River ; Construction ; Plowing It Under (original 1934 version); Plowing it Under (reworked 1964)
1. Down by the Riverside
2. Achelous and Hercules
3. Down the River (The Young Fisherman)
4. Wheat
5. Works of art by Thomas Hart Benton in the Crystal Bridges Museum main collection:
The Steel Mill ; Tobacco Sorters ; Ten Pound Hammer ; Strike ; Slow Train Through Arkansas ;
Study for 'Slow Train Through Arkansas' ; Buffalo River ; Construction ; Plowing It Under (original 1934 version); Plowing it Under (reworked 1964)
REFERENCES
Biography adapted from: Rodgers, David. "Benton, Thomas Hart." The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Ed. Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press.<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e248>.
Biography adapted from: Rodgers, David. "Benton, Thomas Hart." The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Ed. Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press.<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e248>.
Artwork behind title: Thomas Hart Benton's The Steel Mill (detail) from Crystal Bridges Museum
