Thomas Hart Benton
Thomas Hart Benton was a regionalist American painter whom was known for his beautiful, vigorous, and colorful murals of the 1930’s. He made very many beautiful, famous painting and murals. Most of the rollicking scenes in his paintings and murals are from the rural past of the American South and Midwest. He has studied in Kansas City, MO; Paris, France; and the ever-changed New York City.
Thomas Hart Benton was born in the familiar, small town of Neosho, Missouri. He was named after his granduncle, the famed and prominent pre-American Civil War senator. First Thomas Hart Benton studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then lived in beautiful Paris for three years. When he came back he moved to New York City after 1912 he turned away from his usual style, modernism, and gradually developed a rugged naturalism that affirmed traditional rural values. By the 1930’s Benton was riding a tide of popular acclaim along with his fellow regionalist Grant Wood, who was responsible for American Gothic, and John Steuart Curry, who was responsible for The Tragic Prelude. The mural, America Today (1930-1931, The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S., New York City), Thomas Hart Benton’s masterpiece, presented an optimistic portrayal of a vital country filled with earthy, muscular figures.
Later on, Thomas Hart Benton returned to Missouri to teach at he Kansas City Institute, and continued to paint both panels and murals. Thomas Hart Benton’s mural in the Missouri state capitol in Jefferson City (1935) stirred disputes because of its open portrayals of some of the seamier facets of Missouri’s past.
Art has always been used to portray a message, American art is no different. Throughout the years American art has been created for many different reasons, including parody and satire. One such example is the painting The Surrender by Joseph Griffith. Although it contains jumbled imagery and may convey a mixed message, The Surrender's main message is that American culture is idolized by the youth of today and that American as a whole is waging war on cultures and religions it doesn’t understand.
Grant Wood was a Regionalist artist who continually endeavored to capture the idyllic beauty of America’s farmlands. In 1930 he had been roaming through his hometown in Iowa searching for inspiration when he stumbled upon a house that left him spellbound. From this encounter came America’s iconic American Gothic. Not long after Wood’s masterpiece was complete the once ideal countryside and the people who tended to it were overcome by despair and suffering as the Great Depression came to be. It was a time of economic distress that affected nearly every nation. America’s stock market crashed in 1929 and by 1933 millions of Americans were found without work and consequently without adequate food, shelter, and other necessities. In 1935, things took a turn for the worst as severe winds and dust storms destroyed the southern Great Plains in the event that became known as the Dust Bowl. Farmers, who had been able to fall back on their crops during past depressions, were hit especially hard. With no work or way or other source of income, many farms were foreclosed, leaving countless families hungry and homeless. Ben Shahn, a Lithuanian-born man who had a deep passion for social injustice, captures the well-known hopelessness of the Great Depression through his photograph Rural Rehabilitation Client. Shahn and Wood use their art to depict the desperation of everyday farmers in America due to the terrors and adverse repercussions that the Great Depression incited.
..., 1820-1865. Columbia Studies in American Culture Series (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942): 13-14.
Gardner, Helen, and Fred S. Kleiner. Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective. N.p., 2014. Print.
Tate, Allen. “A Southern Mode of the Imagination.” In Essays of Four Decades. Chicago: Swallow Press, 1968; (Third Edition) Wilmington, De: ISI Press, 1999.
Norman Rockwell is best known for his depictions of dail life of a rural America. Rockwell’s goals in art revolved around his desire to create an ideal America. He said “ I paint life as I would like it to be.”
The book addresses how the United States intervened around the world against communism. The United States focused closer to home, particularly in Latin America. This points to the imperialistic mentality of the United States during that era which I believe it continues today.
Roberto Suro, the author of “Strangers Among Us”, wrote arguably one of the most sincere and informative immigration related narratives. Suro’s analysis and observations of the emergence of social and economic immigrant contribution go into great depth and explanation of exactly how Latino Immigration is slowly but surely transforming America. Suro’s narrative gives an in depth look at various Latino groups and how each group adapted and intertwined with American societies around the nation. Each Latino group regardless of immigrating location had its own separate story and journey as they each have immigrated to an American generation that is seeing economic changes with an overall unsympathetic American attitude towards immigrants. Immigrating to another nation forms
This set off the movement of idealization and using the body as a performance of masculinity. Another painting by Eakins, Frank Hamilton Cushing (1895), emblematized that the West is a place for reinvention. Frank Hamilton Cushing was one of the first American anthropologist to observe and chronicle the lives of Native Americans.
Grant Wood’s American Gothic is one of the most famous paintings in the history of American art. The painting brought Wood almost instant fame after being exhibited for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930. It is probably the most reproduced and parodied works of art, and has become a staple within American pop-culture. The portrait of what appears to be a couple, standing solemnly in front of their mid-western home seems to be a simplistic representation of rural America. As simple as it sounds, when looking deeper into this image, it reveals something much more complex.
The artistic stylization used by early 20th century artists endeavors a distinctive approach in the depiction of the Great Depression in both methodology and aesthetic portrayal. Philip Evergood’s Dance Marathon (c. 1931) and Reginald Marsh’s Chatham Square (c. 1931), which both are exhibited at the Blanton Museum of Art, are artistic representations of the American culture during the “Dirty Thirties”. Although both paintings were created during the same time period and ultimately share the thematic downheartedness of the decade, Evergood and Marsh cultivate their own independent approach in constructing their individual artworks. Marsh focuses his piece on the basis of composition, detail, saturations and highlights to construe a melancholic
The Mexican government is known to be corrupt- reinforcement coming from the people interviewed in the film. Various federalist and centralist politicians in the Mexican history have been known to bribe for votes, made apparent by the film to occur even at the local level with municipal presidents. Contributing to the push factor to the U.S., corrupt government bodies push the natives towards leaving by providing no benefits that were promised, such as “lotteries” for those who fill out documentation proving that welfare was properly disbursed when no welfare was given. It was said that the Mexican people depend more on their relatives in the United States than they do on the government (e.g. money sent back to fund patron saints and festivals or just for family support). This is an amazing example given by the film about exploitation- a common occurrence in the political history of
In conclusion, the separation of nations by border does not stop immigration to the United States. The alleyway that separates nations has obstructed the culture identity of Puerto Ricans and Mexicans through temptations. The idea of selling your soul to receive material wealth is a bad move for Latinos in general. Our culture makes up our identity; without having strict ties to our culture, we lose our identity.
Holt, Elizabeth G. From the Classicist to the Impressionists: Art and Architecture in the 19th Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966.
This reminded Benton his grown distant relationship with his father after he chose not to follow family’s political path, ‘“I got a renewed sense of the variety and picture squese of his life and of the life of the people of my home country which the infatuated artistic vanities of the city had brought me to regard as stale and stuffy ”’ He felt closely to his father again by bonding with his “people’s history” art and the political role his father has been desire on him to reveal the social problem in his hometown. Since then, he has travelled to most the backward regions in the South and Midwest and experienced the poor labor radicals in the Midwest, the bribery and fraud in Republican governor of Missouri and inequality between labor and farmers class . After participating more political debates in New York, he realized this mess in Missouri was guided by the loosely harnessed capitalist system. He more confirms his duty was to communicate the western class issues of turmoil to the public through expressing his political thoughts in the paintings. Subscribed to Marxism, he claimed to be revealed a deeply ingrained populism, which he was pro-labor, anti-big capitalist and radicalism on the political issues