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{{Infobox Artist
{{Infobox_Company |
| bgcolour = #6495ED
company_name = Hess Corporation |
| name = Thomas Hart Benton
company_logo = [[Image:Hess Corporation logo.png|180px]] |
| image = Tom benton.jpg
company_type = [[Public company|Public]] ({{nyse|HES}})|
company_slogan = |
| imagesize =
foundation = [[1919]] |
| caption = Thomas Hart Benton
| birthname =
location = [[New York City]] and <br> [[Woodbridge, New Jersey]]|
| birthdate = {{birth date |1889|4|15|}}
key_people = |
| location = [[Neosho, Missouri]]
industry = [[List of petroleum companies|Oil and Gasoline]]|
| deathdate = {{death date and age |1975|1|19|1889|4|15|}}
num_employees = 11,610<ref>{{cite book
| last =
| deathplace =
| nationality = [[United States|American]]
| first =
| field = [[Painting]]
| authorlink =
| training =
| coauthors =
| movement =
| title = Standard and Poor's 500 Guide
| works =
| publisher = The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
| date = 2007
| patrons =
| influenced by =
| location =
| pages =
| influenced =
| url =
| awards =
| doi =
| isbn = 0-07-147906-6 }}</ref>|
products = [[Petrochemical]]|
revenue = |
operating_income = |
net_income = |
homepage = http://www.hess.com/
}}
}}


<!-- [[Image:Tom benton.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Thomas Hart Benton, painter]] -->
The '''Hess Corporation''' ({{nyse|HES}}) (known as '''Amerada Hess Corporation''' prior to [[May 8]], [[2006]], and '''Amerada Oil and Chemical Company''' in 1919) is an integrated oil company based in [[New York City]]. The company [[Oil exploration|explores]], produces, transports, and [[Oil refinery|refines]] [[Petroleum|crude oil]] as well as [[Natural gas|natural gas]]. Vertically completing the logistical chain, over 1,200 [[filling station]]s market gas to consumers primarily on the [[East Coast of the United States]]. Although towered over in size by enormous global players in the same industry, Hess placed a formidable #75 in the [[List of Fortune 500|2007 Fortune 500]] rankings.
'''Thomas Hart Benton''' ([[April 15]], [[1889]] - [[January 19]], [[1975]]) was an [[United States|American]] [[Painting|painter]] and [[muralist]]. Along with [[Grant Wood]] and [[John Steuart Curry]], he was at the forefront of the [[American scene painting|Regionalist]] art movement. His fluid, almost sculpted paintings showed everyday scenes of life in the United States. Though his work is perhaps best associated with the Midwest, he created scores of paintings of New York - where he lived for over 20 years, [[Martha’s Vineyard]] - where he summered for much of his adult life, the American South and the American West.


==History==
==Life and work==
===Early years===
Formed in 1919, the '''Amerada Corporation''' was a holding company for its principal subsidiary, the '''Amerada Petroleum Corporation'''. The oil producer experienced solid growth during most of the 1920s, hitting a peak in 1926 with a net income of [[United States dollar|USD]] 4.9 million. However, in the years leading to the [[Great Depression]], weakness in the oil markets contributed to sluggish profits. The aftermath of the market crash aggravated the unsteady oil industry. In the first quarter of 1930, the company experienced a minor loss. The early years of the Depression was a struggle against wavering demand and overproduction in some regions. Later into the 1930s, the financial forecast became more sanguine for Amerada.
Benton was born in [[Neosho, Missouri|Neosho]], [[Missouri]], into an influential clan of politicians and powerbrokers. Benton's father [[Maecenas Benton]] was a lawyer and [[United States House of Representatives|United States congressman]], and his namesake and great-uncle [[Thomas Hart Benton (senator)|Thomas Hart Benton]] was one of the first two [[United States Senator]]s from Missouri.


Benton spent his childhood shuttling between [[Washington D.C.]] and Missouri. Benton rebelled against his grooming for a future political career, preferring to develop his interest in art. As a teenager, he worked as a cartoonist for the ''Joplin American'' newspaper, in [[Joplin, Missouri]].
In December 1941, the company reorganized by merging the holding company with the principal operating subsidiary, Amerada Petroleum Corporation, into a simplified operating company. The new entity also adopted the former subsidiary's name.


===Training===
Robust postwar growth rocketed the company past USD 100 million in sales in 1955.
In 1907 Benton enrolled at the [[Art Institute of Chicago]], but left for [[Paris]], [[France]] in 1909 to continue his art education at the [[Académie Julian]]. In Paris, Benton met other [[North America]]n artists such as [[Diego Rivera]] and [[Stanton Macdonald-Wright]], an advocate of [[Synchromism]]. Wright's influence gave a strong Synchromist leaning to Benton's work.


Benton returned to [[New York, New York|New York City]] in 1913 and continued painting. His work as a draftsman in the [[United States Navy]] in 1919 changed his style significantly. His artwork during his navy stint concentrated on realistic sketches and drawings of shipyard work and life&mdash;a change of focus that would continue throughout Benton's career.
[[Hess Oil and Chemical]], an oil refiner and marketer founded by [[Leon Hess]] (who later owned the [[New York Jets]]), in 1966 acquired 10% of the company for USD 100 million after the [[United Kingdom|British]] government sold its stake, which was amassed during [[World War II]]. Hess and Amerada would announce plans for a merger in December 1968. Some Amerada stockholders led by Morton Adler criticized the arrangement as being too favorable for Hess. Adler argued Amerada's [[oil reserves]] would contribute the lion's share of assets for the proposed company, so Amerada stockholders should retain more control of the new company. Before the stockholder vote on the matter, [[ConocoPhillips|Phillips Petroleum]], an integrated oil firm, approached Amerada with its own merger proposal, but the offer was declined in March. Still interested, Phillips nonetheless stated it would not carry out a [[proxy fight]] against the proposed Hess deal. Hess fearing such a strategy, made a cash [[tender offer]] of USD 140 million for an additional 1.1 million shares of Amerada, which would double its holding in the company. The new shares would be employed in a May stockholder vote deciding the merger's fate. The vote took place amidst shareholder rancor that in addition to echoing Adler's arguments, objected to Amerada's financing of the recently completed tender offer. Hess planned to cancel the shares and the cost of the acquisition would be absorbed by the newly formed company. One shareholder at the meeting quipped, "It looks to me as if Hess is buying Amerada with Amerada's money." Proponents of the deal won, and the USD 2.4 billion merger combining a purely production company with a refinery and marketer operation was completed. Although, controversy was not yet extinguished by the stockholder confirmation. A [[class action]] federal lawsuit in 1972 claiming the proxy vote information was misleading. In 1976, a court agreed that the company falsely claimed to have considered each company's assets as a reason for the merger.
[[Image:People-of-Chilmark-Benton-1920-lrg.jpg|thumb|left|250px|People of Chilmark (Figure Composition), 1920, in the [[Hirshhorn Museum]] collection, Washington, D.C.]]


===Regionalism===
In 2001, Amerada Hess purchased Triton Energy Limited in a cash tender deal valued at approximately USD 3.2 billion. Triton, one of the largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies in the U.S., had earned a reputation as a maverick oil company due to its highly successful yet potentially risky overseas exploration.[http://www.answers.com/Triton+Energy+Corporation?cat=biz-fin]. According to Amerada Hess press releases at the time, Triton's major oil and gas assets in West Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia would strengthen its exploration and production business and give it access to long life international reserves. Hess also stated that the purchase was expected to immediately increase the company's per-day barrel output by more than 25 percent.<ref>Hess Corporation: 2001 [[http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=101801&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=490163&highlight=]</ref>
On return to New York in the early 1920s, Benton declared himself an "enemy of modernism" and began the naturalistic and representational work today known as [[American scene painting|Regionalism]]. Benton was active in [[leftist]] politics. He expanded the scale of his Regionalist works, culminating in his ''America Today'' murals at the [[New School for Social Research]] in 1930-31. He was heavily influenced by [[El Greco]].


In 1932 Benton broke through to the mainstream. A relative unknown, he was chosen to produce the murals of [[Indiana]] life that would become that state's contribution to the 1933 [[Century of Progress]] Exhibition in [[Chicago, Illinois]]. The ''Indiana Murals'' stirred controversy; Benton painted everyday people but did not sugarcoat the state’s history, and many criticized the work for including [[Ku Klux Klan]] members in full regalia. The mural panels are currently displayed at [[Indiana University]] in Bloomington with the majority on display in the "Hall of Murals" at Indiana University Auditorium. Four additional panels are displayed in the former University Theatre which is connected to the Auditorium. The final two panels, including the most controversial panel, with images of the Ku Klux Klan, are located in a lecture classroom at Woodburn Hall.
Following on the heels of the Triton purchase, energy prices fell and global economies weakened. Amerada Hess struggled through the following years, posting a USD 218 million loss in 2002 due primarily to a USD 530 million charge relating to its write-down of the Ceiba oil field, but then posting steadily increasing profits from 2003 through 2006, when the company posted USD 1.920 billion in net income.<ref>Hess Corporation: Investor Relations Annual Reports[http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=101801&p=irol-reportsAnnual]</ref>


On December 24, 1934, Benton was featured on the first color cover of [[Time Magazine|''Time'' magazine]]. Benton’s work was featured along with fellow Midwesterners [[Grant Wood]] and [[John Steuart Curry]] in an article titled “The U.S. Scene”. The article portrayed the trio as the new heroes of American art and cemented Regionalism as a significant art movement.
==Environmental record==
New York Times reported on [[October 28]], [[1990]], that a barge, with a load of 31,000 barrels of kerosene, struck a reef in the Hudson river spilling 163,000 gallons of fuel. Immediately, Hess assumed responsibility for the cleanup; the Coast Guard worked alongside the Red Star company to clean and to contain the spill to one area.1 Coast Guard official Mr. Holmes said “The weather and wind conditions are almost as close to perfect as they could get,” and this contributed to a quicker and surer cleanup than could otherwise be. According to New York Times, Mr. Holmes also said that 70 percent of the spill would be gone in 3 days due to the natural evaporation rate of Kerosene. Even though most Kerosene evaporates, toxic chemicals such as benzene stay in the water and harm certain fish. Hess claims that their corporate policy has “long stressed” their “fundamental commitment to comply with applicable environment, health and safety laws and regulations,” and they claim to clean every spill made.<ref>2 Foderaro, Lisa: New York Times: October 28, 1990 [http://proposition89.blogspot.com/2006/09/big-oil-throws-down-against-proposition.html]</ref><ref>Hess Corporation: 2006 [http://www.hess.com/downloads/reports/EHS/US/2006/environmental4.html]</ref>


In 1935 Benton left the heated artistic debates of New York for Missouri, where Benton had agreed to create a mural for the [[Missouri State Capitol]] in [[Jefferson City, Missouri|Jefferson City]]. A ''Social History of Missouri'' is perhaps Benton’s greatest work. But it, like his previous murals, caused controversy with its focus on subjects like Missouri outlaw [[Jesse James]], slavery, and political boss [[Tom Pendergast]]. Benton used his return to Missouri to embrace the Regionalist art movement. He settled in [[Kansas City, Missouri]] and accepted a teaching job at the [[Kansas City Art Institute]]. Kansas City afforded Benton greater access to the rural America then disappearing. Benton's sympathy was with the working class and the small farmer, unable to gain material advantage despite the [[Industrial Revolution]]. His works often show the melancholy, desperation and beauty of small-town life. In the late 1930’s, he created some of his best known work, including the iconic allegorical nude Persephone, which famously hung in Billy Rose’s nightclub, the Diamond Horseshoe. In 1937, he published his critically acclaimed autobiography, ''An Artist in America'', which was praised by [[Sinclair Lewis]]: “Here’s a rare thing, a painter who can write.” During this period, Benton also began to produce signed, limited edition lithographs that were made available to the public at $5.00 each through the [[Associated American Artists]] Galleries.
In accordance with a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation(DEC) agreement the Hess Corporation will pay $1.1 million in fines and also "bring 65 gasoline stations and oil storage facilities into compliance with state requirements." The agreement addresses more than 100 violations at 65 gas stations and Hess's Brooklyn major oil storage facility. The agreement is aimed at resolving Hess's violations in the DEC's New York City and lower Hudson Valley regions.<ref>[http://www.environmental-expert.com/resultEachPressRelease.aspx?cid=26740&codi=28506&idproducttype=8 "Hess fined $1.1m for Hudson River estuary pollution"] "Environmental-Expert" [[March 4]], [[2008]]. Accessed [[May 12]], [[2008]]</ref>


===Benton as teacher===
In a recent water contamination case against several major US oil companies, the Hess Corporation will pay part of a $422 million settlement. The case was filed by 153 public water providers in 17 states against the oil companies "over water over drinking water contamination caused by the gasoline additive Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE)." The settlement also stipulates that the settling parties pay their share of treatment costs of the plaintiff's wells that may become contaminated or require treatment for the next 30 years.<ref>[http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2008/may/11/dallas-law-firm-baron-budd-wins-422-million-water-/ "Dallas law firm Baron & Budd wins $422 million water contamination lawsuit"] "Pegasus News" [[May 11]], [[2008]]. Accessed [[May 12]], [[2008]]</ref>
Benton taught at the [[Art Students League of New York]] from 1926 to 1935 and at the [[Kansas City Art Institute]] from 1935 to 1941. His most famous student, [[Jackson Pollock]], whom he mentored in the Art Students League, would go on to found the [[Abstract Expressionism|Abstract Expressionist]] movement&mdash;wildly different from Benton's own style. Jackson Pollock often said that Benton's traditional teachings gave him something to rebel against. However, art scholars have recognized the Pollock’s organizational principles continued to follow Benton’s teachings even after his move away from realism, with forms composed around a central vertical pole with each form counterbalanced by an equal and opposite form.


Benton's students in New York and Kansas City included many painters who would make significant contributions to American art. Among the dozens of other artists Benton impacted as a teacher were Pollock’s brother [[Charles Pollock]], [[Charles Banks Wilson]], [[Frederic James]], [[Lamar Dodd]], [[Reginald Marsh]], [[Robert MacDonald Graham]], [[Charles Green Shaw]], [[William Wind McKim]], [[Margot Peet]], [[Jackson Lee Nesbitt]], [[Roger Medearis]], [[Aaron Pyle]], [[Glenn Gant]], [[Albert Pels]], [[Fuller Potter]], [[Fred Shane]], [[Delmer J. Yoakum]] and [[Daniel Celentano]].<ref>Under the Influence: The Students of Thomas Hart Benton. Marianne Berardi. The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. 1993.</ref>
In regard to greenhouse gas emissions Hess outlined in their 2006 Corporate Sustainability Report a "four element" strategy to reduce and control emissions. The strategy's steps include monitoring, measuring, managing, and mitigating. Through reporting results, energy efficiency and recovery, and carbon capture and trading the company intends to improve it's environmental impact.<ref>[http://www.hess.com/downloads/reports/EHS/US/2006/environmental2.html "2006 Corporate Sustainability Report"] Accessed [[May 12]], [[2008]]</ref>


In 1941, Benton was dismissed from the Art Institute after calling the typical [[art museum]] "a graveyard run by a pretty boy with delicate wrists and a swing in his gait" with further disparaging references to, as he claimed, the excessive influence of homosexuals in the art world.<ref>{{ cite news | date=1941-04-14 | publisher=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] | title=Benton Hates Museums | url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,932248,00.html | accessdate=2007-07-29}}</ref>
== Hess Truck==
Since 1964, Hess gas stations have sold a toy truck around Christmas time. Each year, the model changes to a new design. Older models are considered collectibles and typically sell for a few hundred or even thousands of dollars. For example, the 1964 truck sells for about $1,400-2,000, depending on condition. Hess periodically has a rare truck such as the 1995 and 2002 chrome which were given away at a stockholder meeting and, more recently, the 2006 truck given to [[New York Stock Exchange]] employees to commemorate its name change from Amerada Hess Corporation to Hess Corporation.


===Later life===
== Other Notables ==
During World War II, Benton created a widely distributed series titled The Year of Peril, which brought into focus the threat to American ideals by fascism and Nazism. Following the war, Regionalism fell from favor, eclipsed by the rise of [[Abstract Expressionism]].<ref>{{ cite web | url=http://www.nbmaa.org/Online_Exhibitions/Benton/html/Benlife.html | publisher=New Britain Museum of American Art | title=Thomas Hart Benton Biography | accessdate=2007-07-29}}</ref> Benton remained active for another 30 years, but his work focused less on social commentary and more on creating stylized bucolic images of pre-industrial farmlands. He also painted a number of murals, including ''Lincoln'' (1953) at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, ''Trading At Westport Landing'' (1956) at The River Club in Kansas City, ''Father Hennepin at Niagara Falls'' (1961) for the Power Authority of the State of New York, ''Turn of the Century, Joplin'' (1972) in [[Joplin, Missouri]], and ''Independence and the Opening of The West'' at the [[Harry S. Truman Library]] in [[Independence, Missouri]]. His work on the Truman Library mural initiated a friendship with the former U.S. President that lasted for the rest of their lives. Benton died in 1975 at work in his studio, just as he completed his final mural, ''The Sources of Country Music'' for the [[Country Music Hall of Fame]] in [[Nashville, Tennessee]].
Hess is also known for giving away wet naps to customers. Customers can take "Hess" wet naps at their filling stations located at the sales counter. Also popular was the 2 for 1 hot dog deal in the 1990's.

In 1977, Benton's 2-1/2 story Victorian residence and carriage house studio in [[Kansas City, Missouri|Kansas City]] officially became the [[Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site]]. The site remains virtually unchanged, with clothing, furniture, and paint brushes still in place since Benton's death and is open for guided tours. The site also displays 13 original works of Benton's art.<ref>[http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/missouri/kansas-city/attraction-detail.html?vid=1154654613525 ''Kansas City Attractions: Thomas Hart Benton Home'', The New York Times], article excerpted from: ''Frommer's USA'', 10th Edition, 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-04726-2</ref>

==Personal Life==
Benton met and married Rita Piacenza, an Italian immigrant, in [[1922]]. They met while Benton was teaching art classes for a neighborhood organization in New York City and she was one of his students. They were married for 53 years until Thomas's death in 1975. Rita passed away ten weeks after her husband. The couple had a son Thomas Piacenza Benton born [[1926]] and a daughter Jessie Benton born [[1939]].

==See also==
{{portal|United States Navy|United States Department of the Navy Seal.svg}}
*[[Synchromism]]
*[[Regionalism (art)|Regionalism]]
*[[Social Realism]]
*[[American modernism]]
*[[American realism]]

==Notes==
{{reflist}}


==References==
==References==
*{{cite book
<references/>
|last= Adams
*Benedict, Roger W. (May 16 1969). "Merger of Amerada Petroleum, Hess Oil, Valued at $2.4 Billion, Voted by Holders". ''[[Wall Street Journal]]'', pg 4.
|first= Henry
*"Court Rules Amerada's Holders Were Misled In Merger With Hess" (August 2, 1976). ''Wall Street Journal'', p. 4.
|title= Thomas Hart Benton: an American original
|publisher= [[Alfred A. Knopf]]
|year= 1989
|isbn= 0-394-57153-3}}
*{{cite book
|last= Benton
|first= Thomas Hart
|title= An Artist in America
|publisher= University of Missouri Press
|year= 1983
|isbn= 0-826-20399-X}}
*{{cite book
|last= Benton
|first= Thomas Hart
|title= An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography
|publisher= Univ Pr of Kansas
|year= 1969
|isbn= 0-700-60005-1}}


==External links==
==External links==
*[http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19341224,00.html TIME] cover (self-portrait), dated December 24, 1934 - caption reads "Thomas Benton's Thomas Benton"
*[http://www.hess.com Hess webpage]
*[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,711633,00.html TIME] accompanying cover story of December 24, 1934, entitled "U.S. Scene"
*[http://www.hess.com/storelocator/storelocator.aspx Hess store locator]
*[http://www.nelson-atkins.org/ The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art], holder of the largest concentration of Benton's works, including his masterpiece ''Persephone''
*[http://www.hesstoytruck.com/ Official website for the Hess toy trucks]
*[http://www.trumanlibrary.org/ Truman Museum and Library]
*{{Geolinks-US-streetscale|40.637193|-74.214449}}
*[http://www.indiana.edu/~deanfac/benton/ ''Parks, the Circus, the Klan, the Press'' in its Contexts] from [[Indiana University Bloomington|Indiana University]]
*[http://artandsocialissues.cmaohio.org/web-content/pages/econ_benton.html Columbus Museum of Art] Web page on Benton's lithograph ''Strike'' (click on picture for larger version)
*[http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=60945 Thomas Hart Benton and the Indiana Murals]
*[http://www.mostateparks.com/benton.htm Missouri State Parks & Historic Sites: Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site]
*[http://geh.org/ar/strip17/htmlsrc/muray_sum00008.html Photographs of Benton; Benton with his wife and son] by [[Nickolas Muray]] (scroll down)


{{DEFAULTSORT:Benton, Thomas Hart}}
[[Category:Companies established in 1919]]
[[Category:Companies based in New York City]]
[[Category:1889 births]]
[[Category:Companies based in New Jersey]]
[[Category:1975 deaths]]
[[Category:Woodbridge Township, New Jersey]]
[[Category:American painters]]
[[Category:Oil companies of the United States]]
[[Category:American printmakers]]
[[Category:American military personnel of World War I]]
[[Category:United States Navy sailors]]
[[Category:People from Kansas City]]
[[Category:Modern painters]]
[[Category:People from Joplin, Missouri]]
[[Category:Members of Art Students League of New York]]
[[Category:School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni]]


[[de:Hess Corporation]]
[[de:Thomas Hart Benton (Maler)]]
[[fr:Thomas Hart Benton (peintre)]]
[[no:Amerada Hess]]
[[pt:Hess Corporation]]
[[hr:Thomas Hart Benton]]
[[ka:თომას ჰარტ ბენტონი (მხატვარი)]]
[[sr:Томас Харт Бентон]]

Revision as of 13:47, 10 October 2008

Thomas Hart Benton
Thomas Hart Benton
NationalityAmerican
Known forPainting

Thomas Hart Benton (April 15, 1889 - January 19, 1975) was an American painter and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid, almost sculpted paintings showed everyday scenes of life in the United States. Though his work is perhaps best associated with the Midwest, he created scores of paintings of New York - where he lived for over 20 years, Martha’s Vineyard - where he summered for much of his adult life, the American South and the American West.

Life and work

Early years

Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, into an influential clan of politicians and powerbrokers. Benton's father Maecenas Benton was a lawyer and United States congressman, and his namesake and great-uncle Thomas Hart Benton was one of the first two United States Senators from Missouri.

Benton spent his childhood shuttling between Washington D.C. and Missouri. Benton rebelled against his grooming for a future political career, preferring to develop his interest in art. As a teenager, he worked as a cartoonist for the Joplin American newspaper, in Joplin, Missouri.

Training

In 1907 Benton enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, but left for Paris, France in 1909 to continue his art education at the Académie Julian. In Paris, Benton met other North American artists such as Diego Rivera and Stanton Macdonald-Wright, an advocate of Synchromism. Wright's influence gave a strong Synchromist leaning to Benton's work.

Benton returned to New York City in 1913 and continued painting. His work as a draftsman in the United States Navy in 1919 changed his style significantly. His artwork during his navy stint concentrated on realistic sketches and drawings of shipyard work and life—a change of focus that would continue throughout Benton's career.

People of Chilmark (Figure Composition), 1920, in the Hirshhorn Museum collection, Washington, D.C.

Regionalism

On return to New York in the early 1920s, Benton declared himself an "enemy of modernism" and began the naturalistic and representational work today known as Regionalism. Benton was active in leftist politics. He expanded the scale of his Regionalist works, culminating in his America Today murals at the New School for Social Research in 1930-31. He was heavily influenced by El Greco.

In 1932 Benton broke through to the mainstream. A relative unknown, he was chosen to produce the murals of Indiana life that would become that state's contribution to the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago, Illinois. The Indiana Murals stirred controversy; Benton painted everyday people but did not sugarcoat the state’s history, and many criticized the work for including Ku Klux Klan members in full regalia. The mural panels are currently displayed at Indiana University in Bloomington with the majority on display in the "Hall of Murals" at Indiana University Auditorium. Four additional panels are displayed in the former University Theatre which is connected to the Auditorium. The final two panels, including the most controversial panel, with images of the Ku Klux Klan, are located in a lecture classroom at Woodburn Hall.

On December 24, 1934, Benton was featured on the first color cover of Time magazine. Benton’s work was featured along with fellow Midwesterners Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry in an article titled “The U.S. Scene”. The article portrayed the trio as the new heroes of American art and cemented Regionalism as a significant art movement.

In 1935 Benton left the heated artistic debates of New York for Missouri, where Benton had agreed to create a mural for the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. A Social History of Missouri is perhaps Benton’s greatest work. But it, like his previous murals, caused controversy with its focus on subjects like Missouri outlaw Jesse James, slavery, and political boss Tom Pendergast. Benton used his return to Missouri to embrace the Regionalist art movement. He settled in Kansas City, Missouri and accepted a teaching job at the Kansas City Art Institute. Kansas City afforded Benton greater access to the rural America then disappearing. Benton's sympathy was with the working class and the small farmer, unable to gain material advantage despite the Industrial Revolution. His works often show the melancholy, desperation and beauty of small-town life. In the late 1930’s, he created some of his best known work, including the iconic allegorical nude Persephone, which famously hung in Billy Rose’s nightclub, the Diamond Horseshoe. In 1937, he published his critically acclaimed autobiography, An Artist in America, which was praised by Sinclair Lewis: “Here’s a rare thing, a painter who can write.” During this period, Benton also began to produce signed, limited edition lithographs that were made available to the public at $5.00 each through the Associated American Artists Galleries.

Benton as teacher

Benton taught at the Art Students League of New York from 1926 to 1935 and at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1935 to 1941. His most famous student, Jackson Pollock, whom he mentored in the Art Students League, would go on to found the Abstract Expressionist movement—wildly different from Benton's own style. Jackson Pollock often said that Benton's traditional teachings gave him something to rebel against. However, art scholars have recognized the Pollock’s organizational principles continued to follow Benton’s teachings even after his move away from realism, with forms composed around a central vertical pole with each form counterbalanced by an equal and opposite form.

Benton's students in New York and Kansas City included many painters who would make significant contributions to American art. Among the dozens of other artists Benton impacted as a teacher were Pollock’s brother Charles Pollock, Charles Banks Wilson, Frederic James, Lamar Dodd, Reginald Marsh, Robert MacDonald Graham, Charles Green Shaw, William Wind McKim, Margot Peet, Jackson Lee Nesbitt, Roger Medearis, Aaron Pyle, Glenn Gant, Albert Pels, Fuller Potter, Fred Shane, Delmer J. Yoakum and Daniel Celentano.[1]

In 1941, Benton was dismissed from the Art Institute after calling the typical art museum "a graveyard run by a pretty boy with delicate wrists and a swing in his gait" with further disparaging references to, as he claimed, the excessive influence of homosexuals in the art world.[2]

Later life

During World War II, Benton created a widely distributed series titled The Year of Peril, which brought into focus the threat to American ideals by fascism and Nazism. Following the war, Regionalism fell from favor, eclipsed by the rise of Abstract Expressionism.[3] Benton remained active for another 30 years, but his work focused less on social commentary and more on creating stylized bucolic images of pre-industrial farmlands. He also painted a number of murals, including Lincoln (1953) at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Trading At Westport Landing (1956) at The River Club in Kansas City, Father Hennepin at Niagara Falls (1961) for the Power Authority of the State of New York, Turn of the Century, Joplin (1972) in Joplin, Missouri, and Independence and the Opening of The West at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. His work on the Truman Library mural initiated a friendship with the former U.S. President that lasted for the rest of their lives. Benton died in 1975 at work in his studio, just as he completed his final mural, The Sources of Country Music for the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee.

In 1977, Benton's 2-1/2 story Victorian residence and carriage house studio in Kansas City officially became the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site. The site remains virtually unchanged, with clothing, furniture, and paint brushes still in place since Benton's death and is open for guided tours. The site also displays 13 original works of Benton's art.[4]

Personal Life

Benton met and married Rita Piacenza, an Italian immigrant, in 1922. They met while Benton was teaching art classes for a neighborhood organization in New York City and she was one of his students. They were married for 53 years until Thomas's death in 1975. Rita passed away ten weeks after her husband. The couple had a son Thomas Piacenza Benton born 1926 and a daughter Jessie Benton born 1939.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Under the Influence: The Students of Thomas Hart Benton. Marianne Berardi. The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. 1993.
  2. ^ "Benton Hates Museums". Time. 1941-04-14. Retrieved 2007-07-29.
  3. ^ "Thomas Hart Benton Biography". New Britain Museum of American Art. Retrieved 2007-07-29.
  4. ^ Kansas City Attractions: Thomas Hart Benton Home, The New York Times, article excerpted from: Frommer's USA, 10th Edition, 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-04726-2

References

  • Adams, Henry (1989). Thomas Hart Benton: an American original. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-57153-3.
  • Benton, Thomas Hart (1983). An Artist in America. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0-826-20399-X.
  • Benton, Thomas Hart (1969). An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography. Univ Pr of Kansas. ISBN 0-700-60005-1.

External links

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