"Argues that musical imagery in the art of American painter Thomas Hart Benton was part of a larger belief in the capacity of sound to register and convey meaning"--Provided by publisher.

Born in Missouri at the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas Hart Benton would become the most notorious and celebrated painter America had ever seen. The first artist to make the cover of Time, he was a true original: an heir to both the rollicking populism of his father's political family and the quiet life of his Appalachian grandfather. In his twenties, he would find his calling in New York, where he was drawn to memories of his small-town youth—and to visions of the American scene. By the mid-1930s, Benton's heroic murals were featured in galleries, statehouses, universities, and museums, and magazines commissioned him to report on the stories of the day. Yet even as the nation learned his name, he was often scorned by critics and political commentators, many of whom found him too nationalistic and his art too regressive. Even Jackson Pollock, his once devoted former student, would turn away from him in dramatic fashion. A boxer in his youth, Benton was quick to fight back, but the widespread backlash had an impact—and foreshadowed many of the artistic debates that would dominate the coming decades. In this definitive biography, Justin Wolff places Benton in the context of his tumultuous historical moment—as well as in the landscapes and cultural circles that inspired him. Thomas Hart Benton—with compelling insights into Benton's art, his philosophy, and his family history—rescues a great American artist from myth and hearsay, and provides an indelibly moving portrait of an influential, controversial, and often misunderstood man.

Lavish, heavily illustrated volume on this American genre painter and muralist.

This generously illustrated book explores the connections between Thomas Hart Benton’s art and Hollywood movies from groundbreaking perspectives. Thomas Hart Benton was a thoroughly American artist. His regionally focused paintings and murals depicted everyday American life as well as the country’s history. This volume focuses on one of the most American of Benton’s associations: Hollywood. Not only did Benton create commissioned murals and portraits of film stars and movies, but he also developed a style that was highly theatrical and narrative. This volume is the first to collect all the works conceived by Benton for the film industry. It includes related ephemera, photographs, and documents of Benton at work, along with a series of thought-provoking essays that explore a diverse array of topics—from Benton’s engagement with American identity from the 1920s to the 1960s, to parallels between Benton’s use of Old Master methods and film production techniques. Fans of Thomas Hart Benton will find surprising insights into his career, while those fascinated by Hollywood history will discover how one of America’s most revered artists shaped and was in turn influenced by the film industry.

This lushly illustrated volume for the first time focuses specifically on the strong influence the South had on Benton's explorations of America and on his career as an artist. Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), a widely recognized American painter, muralist, printmaker, and illustrator, first attained prominence during the 1920s and 1930s as an artist, teacher, critic, writer, and outspoken art world personality. By 1934, when he was the first artist featured on the cover of Time magazine, he had become one of the most recognized artists in the United States. Beginning in the 1920s and continuing throughout his career, Benton traveled the breadth of the country, sketching and recording the details of the changing daily life he encountered on the backroads and in the isolated cultural pockets of America. Inspired by his early campaign travels in Missouri with his father, who had been elected to Congress as a Populist in 1897, and driven by his own conviction that the nation was sacrificing its unique culture and history in its rush to become a new, modern society, Benton set out to capture the essence of contemporary America. The American South held a special fascination for Benton, and from his travels and sketching trips throughout the region came many of his most noted images of America. Representing both the drawings Benton made during his travels to the South and the major paintings and murals that later incorporated details from these sketches and finished drawings, Thomas Hart Benton and the American South is a feast to the eye and reveals much about the artist and the South that so captivated him.

The drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, trailblazing Abstract Expressionist, appear to be the polar opposite of Thomas Hart Benton's highly figurative Americana. Yet the two men had a close and highly charged relationship dating from Pollock's days as a student under Benton. Pollock's first and only formal training came from Benton, and the older man soon became a surrogate father to Pollock. In true Oedipal fashion, Pollock even fell in love with Benton's wife. Pollock later broke away from his mentor artistically, rocketing to superstardom with his stunning drip compositions. But he never lost touch with Benton or his ideas-in fact, his breakthrough abstractions reveal a strong debt to Benton's teachings. I n an epic story that ranges from the cafés and salons of Gertrude Stein's Paris to the highways of the American West, Henry Adams, acclaimed author of Eakins Revealed, unfolds a poignant personal drama that provides new insights into two of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.