Of the many painters who benefited from the WPA's art projects, few are as distinctively American as Thomas Benton, who was a mentor to the young Jackson Pollack, who would help establish American painting internationally in the decades following the 1930's. Considered a Regionalist, Benton painted scenes of American everyday life, usually on a massive scale in a mural format. It was during his tenure under the WPA that he painted some of his largest and most striking works. His work seems to me one of the most appropriate examples of Depression-Era art. His monumental depictions of working people and their lives provided a much-needed boost to the traumatized psyche of America, but without resorting to the nostalgic idioms of artists such as Norman Rockwell. Benton never shied away from the ugly realities of American life at the time, but he managed to condense it in a lyrical form, not unlike the way Woody Guthrie would write beautiful ballads from the darkest material from life.
I think Benton's work has a slight resemblance to Herschel Levit's work which I put into a blog earlier. I like them both.
ReplyDeleteIt is really interesting to me to think about the relationship between Benton and Pollack. It's odd to think of Benton mentoring Pollack because their styles are so unbelievably different. I mean, regionalism vs. abstract modernism?
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