.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
Thomas Hart Benton’s visually striking images of American life have captured audiences for more than a century, and it is often his powerful references to sound that elevate his paintings into dynamic, multi-sensory narratives. A skilled musician as well as one of America’s most ubiquitous artists, Benton’s literal and conceptual depictions of sound layer his paintings with deeper meaning. Leo G. Mazow writes, “In Benton’s pictorial universe, it is through sound–and its visualization–that stories are told, opinions are voiced, experiences are preserved, and history is recorded. All that is consequential, or so the artist would have us believe, has both voiced and heard components.” (Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2012, p. 2) The present work, entitled Conversation, beautifully demonstrates Benton’s ability to add these sonic harmonies to the classic visual rhythms of his Modern Regionalist landscapes of the Western plains, communicating as much, if not more, than his roaring horror-vacui murals.
As a leading member of the Regionalist movement, Benton firmly believed in producing art for a human purpose and, more specifically, an American purpose. He opposed the Modernist credo “art for art’s sake” that emerged with the rise of abstraction in the 1910s and 20s, instead committing himself to reflecting distinctly American themes and values in his art. Benton, however, would later counter the assumption that his work opposed Modern movements, writing, “Contrary to general belief, the ‘Regionalist’ movement did not in any way oppose abstract form. It simply wished to put meanings, recognizable American meanings, into some of it.” (“An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography,” p. 77) The artist travelled the country gathering inspiration from its unique landscapes and people, resulting in vibrant paintings of undulating, modern forms. Conversation was likely inspired by the vast Western plains he witnessed in West Texas and New Mexico the year it was painted.
In addition to its inspiration from the unique American landscape, Conversation points to the recurring motif within Benton’s paintings of oral culture and visually suggesting the sounds–both cacophonous and euphonious–through which information and feeling are communicated. Benton’s lifelong faith in and relationship with the power of sound emanates throughout his oeuvre, including several of his most famous works. For example, The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley (1934, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas) spans the themes of dialogue and music, with a winding composition evocative of pulsing sound waves. His monumental Sources of Country Music mural in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Nashville (1973-74), the final work of Benton’s career, delights in so many elements of the pleasures, functions and mechanics of creating sound. Yet, as evidenced by Conversation, Benton did not reserve his powerful references to sound to works directly referencing music.
Indeed, of the present work, art critic Lewis Mumford wrote, “there is more of a living, breathing humanity in Benton’s landscape of three horses on a wide prairie…than in the most crowded external representation of a city crowd.” (as quoted in L.G. Mazow, Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2012, p. 15) In fact, the expansive, open landscape of Conversation suggests a largely muted locale, in which only the three equine participants are privy to each other’s implied sounds. Mazow explains, “Benton’s painting Conversation (1928)…demonstrates the pictorial workings of sound in both its surface and more profound meanings. The three horses share a space intersected by their respective gazes. The painting’s title as well as the subjects’ compositional placement and gestures all suggest a discourse escaping a bystander’s ability to hear or comprehend…The horses’ ‘conversation’ is…meaning-forming, but it is also theoretical and subjectively realized…Our inability to enter the horses’ sonic zone does not diminish the expressive richness or even the sacredness of the conversation.” (p. 14)
The spatial distance between the viewer and the subjects’ private interaction emphasizes its sacredness and makes Conversation an all the more brilliant metaphor for the profound importance of human connection, executed with Benton’s signature fluid brushwork capturing the inherent rhythms of the American southwest.
As a leading member of the Regionalist movement, Benton firmly believed in producing art for a human purpose and, more specifically, an American purpose. He opposed the Modernist credo “art for art’s sake” that emerged with the rise of abstraction in the 1910s and 20s, instead committing himself to reflecting distinctly American themes and values in his art. Benton, however, would later counter the assumption that his work opposed Modern movements, writing, “Contrary to general belief, the ‘Regionalist’ movement did not in any way oppose abstract form. It simply wished to put meanings, recognizable American meanings, into some of it.” (“An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography,” p. 77) The artist travelled the country gathering inspiration from its unique landscapes and people, resulting in vibrant paintings of undulating, modern forms. Conversation was likely inspired by the vast Western plains he witnessed in West Texas and New Mexico the year it was painted.
In addition to its inspiration from the unique American landscape, Conversation points to the recurring motif within Benton’s paintings of oral culture and visually suggesting the sounds–both cacophonous and euphonious–through which information and feeling are communicated. Benton’s lifelong faith in and relationship with the power of sound emanates throughout his oeuvre, including several of his most famous works. For example, The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley (1934, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas) spans the themes of dialogue and music, with a winding composition evocative of pulsing sound waves. His monumental Sources of Country Music mural in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Nashville (1973-74), the final work of Benton’s career, delights in so many elements of the pleasures, functions and mechanics of creating sound. Yet, as evidenced by Conversation, Benton did not reserve his powerful references to sound to works directly referencing music.
Indeed, of the present work, art critic Lewis Mumford wrote, “there is more of a living, breathing humanity in Benton’s landscape of three horses on a wide prairie…than in the most crowded external representation of a city crowd.” (as quoted in L.G. Mazow, Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2012, p. 15) In fact, the expansive, open landscape of Conversation suggests a largely muted locale, in which only the three equine participants are privy to each other’s implied sounds. Mazow explains, “Benton’s painting Conversation (1928)…demonstrates the pictorial workings of sound in both its surface and more profound meanings. The three horses share a space intersected by their respective gazes. The painting’s title as well as the subjects’ compositional placement and gestures all suggest a discourse escaping a bystander’s ability to hear or comprehend…The horses’ ‘conversation’ is…meaning-forming, but it is also theoretical and subjectively realized…Our inability to enter the horses’ sonic zone does not diminish the expressive richness or even the sacredness of the conversation.” (p. 14)
The spatial distance between the viewer and the subjects’ private interaction emphasizes its sacredness and makes Conversation an all the more brilliant metaphor for the profound importance of human connection, executed with Benton’s signature fluid brushwork capturing the inherent rhythms of the American southwest.