Ken Burns - Thomas
Hart Benton
Director:
Ken Burns
Year: 1989
Rating: 7.0
Thomas Hart Who? Actually, I had thought that this Ken Burn's documentary
was going to be about the Thomas Hart Benton who was a famous politician
and statesman in the first half of the 19th century. He was one of the major
proponents of Manifest Destiny - expanding America from sea to shining sea
and also against slavery and he made it into John Kennedy's Profiles of Courage
for doing so. But in fact, this Thomas Hart Benton is his great nephew who
was named after the original.
I should probably have been more familiar with him but it was a hole in my
knowledge base - until the documentary started showing his paintings and
it clicked - I have seen his paintings many times generally not in art books
which I have little familiarity with but history books or articles in magazines.
Lots of his paintings. From his early days as a painter in the 1920's till
literally the day he died in 1975 just as he was about to sign his latest
mural, he painted America as he saw it - exaggerated, heroic, amusing, entertaining
itself, the small towns and big cities, the mountains and small rural farms
- muscular figures, slaves, workers in the factories, the KKK hanging men
- many of them colossal murals that hang all over this country. I look at
his paintings and I immediately thought of Dos Passos, the writer, who also
captured a part of America in the 1930s.
During his lifetime he was often unpopular with the critics - controversial
with the public but he just kept painting. His mural titled America Today
is magnificent in its detail and variety. His popularity waned as abstract
painting came into vogue with one of his students leading the way, Pollack,
but like all things it has come back into fashion. Today at least to me his
paintings feel very unique, very modern and just cool.
