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About
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.
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.
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Reviews
"Wolff . . . makes the artist interesting, largely by taking a balanced view of him. He neither praises nor critically buries Benton but rather, and with what feels like an undercurrent of empathy, works hard to give him his day in court . . . Some biographies edit out ambiguity; they want us to love or loathe their subjects. Wolff takes the opposite tack. He lays out all of Benton's contrarieties [and] argues them through . . . The Benton who emerges is not appealing, but neither is he simple, even though he spent much of his energy trying to be."
Holland Cotter, The New York Times Book Review
"Thomas Hart Benton may be the artist for our times. He'd fit right into the tea party and Occupy Wall Street, anywhere left, right or center where folks gather to protest big business and big government . . . [Justin Wolff] plants the artist in the politics of his time and deftly traces the artistic influences that eventually brought Benton to his mature style, one based upon what he saw with his own eyes but bursting with muscular energy. Wolff also paints a sensitive portrait of a man often full of self-doubt yet as stubborn as a Missouri mule . . . [He writes] with remarkable evenhandedness and clarity."
Bill Marvel, The Dallas Morning News
"A valuable and welcome book . . . Carefully researched and exceptionally readable . . . Thanks to Thomas Hart Benton: A Life . . . we have the chance to renew our understanding and appreciation of this seminal figure and his legacy. Wolff convincingly demonstrates that Benton was a gifted artist who played a central role as American art moved into the modern era."
Terry Hartle, The Christian Science Monitor