Thomas Hart Benton

I'm not a bona-fide art aficionado. I only know enough about art to make me dangerous. But I know what I like when I see it. The uppity, intellectual crowd can scoff at my low-born tastes as much as they like.

I like Thomas Hart Benton. I've been aware of him as an artist since childhood because he was born just south of where my wife grew up. In this part of the country, most people are aware of him, either from school, or from his murals in the Missouri State Capitol. It would take too long to discuss all the reasons why I identify with his artistic sensibilities so much.

I came across an essay he wrote about the Indiana murals on the University of Indiana's website. Although he was referring to painting, this paragraph could apply equally to writers:

Only knowledge which is deeply and profoundly a part of one can be communicated through the logical conventions of a form. Such knowledge is found, not on the intellectual fringe of life, or in the illusions of cloistered sensibilities, but in life itself where the drive of a people is felt and shared. The artist who would represent a civilization must be a part of it. We can give only that which is within ourselves.

— Thomas Hart Benton

As writers (especially if we're mixing it up with the literati by studying writing in a university setting) we might be sorely tempted to be out on the "intellectual fringe" because, let's be honest, it's just more fun to be a rebel than it is to do something truly productive and within the mainstream. Benton had the same problem in his day. While teaching at the Kansas City Art Institute, one of Benton's students was Jackson Pollock. Yes, that Jackson Pollock. The dribbled paint guy (oh, but it takes more skill than you allow to dribble paint with such elegance!). Critics cite Pollock as surpassing Benton by leaps and bounds. Here is where I and the critics diverge.

Benton is, in my completely uninformed and worthless opinion, one of America's greatest painters. Although he studied in Paris, as all the great painters have done (it must be a right-of-passage thing for artists; like publishing houses in New York, it just Has To Be That Way or you're only pretending), Benton came back to his roots, the Midwest (and no, Ohio, you are not included—you might have been the Midwest at the time of the Louisiana Purchase, but that was a few years ago), and painted it. His paintings are extravagant epics that show people as they really were (in the '20s and '30s). His work is plastered across murals where the Common Man can stand and adventure through them.

What did Jackson Pollock ever do for the Common Man? Zippo. Nada. He was and is the Emperor's New Clothes of Art.

As writers, we often flirt with our own New Clothes. We purposely seek out ways to differentiate ourselves from Everyone Else just to be noticed. We become utterly selfish in our desire to glorify ourselves, rather than hone our empathy for the real people that inform our characters and their world. Thomas Hart Benton spent his whole life trying to create art that reflected and appealed to the Everyday Joe, rather than pander to the reflecting-pool-shallowness of the "intellectual fringe." His work has a depth to it that could only come from having a heartfelt conviction that the real Life of Art lay in real people. His empathy for their plight is evident in almost all his work.

As an artist, Thomas Hart Benton is one of my most important influences.