People Of Chilmark Essay

People of Chilmark, by Thomas Hart Benton, is a post- WWI visual art piece depicting both the chaos and unity in the fictional town of Chilmark. In many ways, Benton’s work describes more than an eery scene, mirroring the revitalization of the United States during the Roaring 1920s. As a member of the lost generation, Benton’s work takes on an existential motif, but ultimately an optimistic tone that conveys a message of unity as America moves itself forward. Benton was born April 15th, 1889, to an affluent family in Missouri. His father, having already served in Congress, maintained that patriotism compelled the United States forward. In 1906, he went to school at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he became part of the cosmopolitan movement of the early twentieth century, drawing inspiration form artists such as Picasso and Klee. What distinguished Benton, however, from the elitism that embodied these early movements was his reluctance to abandoned rural America. In 1924, he began traveling the Southwest corners of America, sketching people and rural landscapes. If Benton’s father

The people, though each distinct in their own clothes, come together to combat the coming storm; symbolically, in the sense that the piece is a testament to the productivity of Americans when they work together, and literally, in the sense that their physical molds form a sort of canvas, with the opposing color schemes and drawn-out muscles adding a frustrated tone to the painting. Benton’s statement becomes evident; to work together may not sound appealing, but ultimately it is necessary. Benton’s own opinion on art reflects this belief. “…[P]rivatism in modernism, its grounding of exaggerated individualism… sets up a people’s art ”(Blake 170). People of Chilmark may be one of Benton’s most radical rallying cries, but it’s effect was far from his initial