Description:

Benton Thomas

Thomas Hart Benton signed letter, poking fun of "Pop" art in the mid 1960's

 

Single page autographed letter signed, 7.25" x 10.5," on personal letterhead of Thomas Hart Benton, Chillmark, Massachusetts, Island of Martha's Vineyard. Dated "Sept 2 - '65" and signed by him as "Tom." Fine condition. Accompanied by the postmarked mailing envelope, address in Benton's hand. Neatly opened along glue line, small crease to flap, else near fine.

 

Thomas Hart Benton lovely penned letter to Leonard Lyons, of the New York Post, which includes a jab at the up and coming New York "Pop" art scene. By 1965 Benton had been painting actively for about 40 years. On his return to New York in the early 1920s, Benton declared himself an "enemy of modernism;"  and he began the naturalistic and representational work today known as Regionalism. He expanded the scale of his Regionalist works, culminating in his America Today murals at the New School for Social Research in 1930-31, and broke into the mainstream artwork in 1932.

 

His letter dated to Leonard was just 3 years after the "Pop" art scene hit New York with a force majeure. Warhol had just painted his infamous Campbell soup cans, Coca-Cola and Marilyn Monroe masterpieces, thus creating a movement which paved a path for a new vision of what the definition of art "is". Thomas Benton's letter to Leonard made a playful comment about this art scene, thanking him for "dinner with the family," and noting "It was a good dinner … and so afterwards was the entertainment provided by that engaging collection of "Pop" art." As Benton was known for a particular dislike for modern, or Pop culture, his sardonic term of calling it "entertainment" is typical Bentonesque caustic humor.

 

Benton who was 5' 3" and pugnacious, was known to have dissed museums, and sometimes said he preferred to hang his work in bars, clubs and saloons than museums. He boxed (a ''bearcat with his fists,'' one friend said about him), swam, played the harmonica, roamed the United States with a knapsack and set an example for alcohol consumption that generations of American male artists have tried to equal.

He was a showman and a public figure. His murals and his consistent artistic challenges to decorum made people who did not normally care about art argue about it and him. He became part of the lore of his native Midwest. He was the prototype of the plain-talking, hard-drinking, America-loving, Europe-hating, anti-effete, anti-intellectual artist that staked claim to American art immediately after World War II.

 

A fantastic period letter from this great master artist who was lucky enough to have seen recognition of his art during his lifetime.


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