Thomas Hart Benton: Discoveries and Interpretations
“Thomas Hart Benton is an extremely valuable book for the student of American Culture, as Adams does an excellent job of going beyond the analysis of the murals, illustrations, and easel paintings, with regard to style and subjects, by integrating the art with the travels, writings, and political setting in which the artist was born and matured.”
–David M. Sokol, Journal of American Culture
“If you read only one book on Thomas Hart Benton, read this one. It takes a balanced approach.”
–Kansas History
“His in-depth study of Benton’s artistic abilities at Martha’s Vineyard, his insightful analysis of Benton’s technical process in drawing and printmaking, and his illuminating discussion of authentication and connoisseurship not only add to our understanding of Benton, but also make a meaningful contribution to a scholarly field that too often excludes dealers, collectors, and other actors and aspects of the art market.”
–Breanne Robertson, The Annals of Iowa
By Henry Adams
University of Missouri Press, 2015
ISBN 9780826220509, 0826220509
Few American artists have incited more controversy than Thomas Hart Benton. Argumentative, brilliant, and enormously influential, Benton painted for nearly seventy years, inspiring acclaim and loathing among students, friends, fellow artists, and outraged critics.
Now, in a series of provocative essays, premier Benton scholar Henry Adams examines the many facets of the man as artist and the pitched battles of his long career, including the fight that raged over the subject matter of his murals, the real reasons for Benton’s feud with the radical left and his fall from grace in the New York art world, and his tumultuous, 36-year-long love-hate relationship with the student with whom he worked most closely, another iconic artist of the 20th century, Jackson Pollock. Adams ends with an account of his own twenty-five-year struggle to expose fakes of Benton’s work.
“Unfailingly interesting, this book should be a basic text for students in American art and cultural studies. It should also be required reading for anyone interested in the history of ideas (even mistaken ones) and the tangled interfaces between art, politics, and living. The Benton who emerges here—cultivated, emotional, a bit of a hick, an aesthetic experimenter—is a new Benton, a towering figure in the history of American painting. He’s Harry Truman and an old master muralist rolled into one, a movie star and a one-man show.”
–Karal Ann Marling, Professor Emeritus of Art History and American Studies, University of Minnesota
“Adams’s Benton differs from the standard image of the artist presented in survey books. This fascinating book gives readers an array of perspectives on Benton’s life, art, and career.”
–Joan Stack, Indiana Magazine of History