By Sharon Jeffus
In the days of the Great Depression, there were three artists who almost succeeded in shifting the center of American painting away from New York City straight to the Midwestern heart of our country; Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and John Stuart Curry. Why did this great Midwestern movement begin? According to Benton, "Because of the breakdown of our economic society in 1929 and the early 1930s, the effort to come out of the Depression occasioned a terrific concentration on America - what it meant, what it was composed of, why it was the way it was - by Americans. Frankly, Wood, Curry and I profited from this concentration."
Thomas Hart Benton was important in the Regionalist movement. According to Three Hundred Years of American Painting, "In the same way that the Hudson River School students were artists who recorded the opening of the far west and the Ashcan artists recorded the open of the metropolis, the Regionalists … captured the Midwestern heartland." The movement remained strong until the abstract artists, beginning with Jackson Pollack, found popularity.
Benton wonderfully pictured American culture of the time - from the farm scenes of the Midwest to church scenes in the South, from rodeo scenes of the west to industrial scenes of the Northeast - but is primarily know for his wonderful pictures of the American heartland. His paintings showed ordinary Americans hard at work. In his drawings, he is both an historian and an artist .In the same way that Remington brings us the American West and the story of the cowboy, Benton gives us the picture of America's transition from a rural agricultural country to an industrialized world power.
Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri in 1889 and began studying art at the early age of 16 at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is said that his father, Congressman Maccenas Eason Benton arrived in Missouri from Tennessee, "riding a horse and knocking snakes out of his path with a long. Stick." Benton wandered American for about 10 years after returning from study in Paris and followed his heart in wanting to paint his homeland. As he traveled, he did sketches of everyday life in America. He caused quite a bit of controversy and became an isolationist in the art world. He was a defender of realism and outspoken against the abstract movement. According to Timeline of American Painting by Elliot, "He went on to say that Pablo Picasso's Guernicia (a mural in Spain) had been copied from an old batik, and that no good painting had come out of France since 1890 … You can see by his face (Rembrandt) in his portraits that he isn't as bright as you are, and so you have to admit that a dumb Dutchman could paint better than you can."
Benton was a rugged individualist, a term which stereotypes the American personality. In 1934, Benton's picture was on the cover of Time Magazine as the leading "Regionalist" painter. He was the first artist every to be pictured on the magazine. Some of his more prominent murals were created for the Missouri Capitol Building, the New York School for Social Research in New York City, and the Indiana Capitol Building. He did a mural in the Truman Library that successfully pictured the founding of independence in America. Chief Justice Earl Warren said about the mural at its unveiling, "It captures the full drama of the epic western movement of our nation. It cannot fail to reach the heart of all who see it. It will help to stir the imagination and the vision of our young people with whom the future of our nation rests, and turn their thoughts to our heroic history and to the great values which made our country great." Benton leaves a rich legacy of visual history for us to enjoy.
Cradling Wheat by Thomas Hart Benton
This is a delightful picture of the American history of harvesting wheat in east Tennessee in 1928. The picture documents the old fashioned way to harvest wheat, before industrialization began. The figures in the foreground draw you into the picture. The men closest to you are larger than the man in the distance. The foreground is the front of the picture; the background is the beautiful landscape seen in the distance. The faces are all hidden. Why do you believe Benton didn't paint the faces in? The men are all dressed in a similar fashion, suggestion uniforms. Notice all the diagonal lines in the picture. Diagonal lines show movement. Notice the shading on the bucket. Where is the light come from if the bucket is shaded on the left-hand side?
This is a wonderful example of atmospheric perspective. The sky is darker at the top and lighter as you go to the horizon line - the place where the sky and land meet. This is what artists have done for centuries to give a picture depth. If you look at the windows of The Last Supper, you see the use of this technique.
Go out on a bright, clear day and look at the sky above you and then look at it in the distance. Is the color different? The closer you come to the horizon line, the lighter the sky should become. The brilliant colors, especially of the wheat, help portray a hot summer day.
Warm colors are red, orange and yellow. The warmth of the wheat against the cool green of the landscape and blue of the sky creates a wonderful contrast. Notice that Benton uses a "hollow and bump" technique, which means that the lines and shapes of a picture interlock with the curves. Wherever there is a bump there is a lovely hollow for it to fit in. This produces a rhythmic pattern or a visual rhythm in the picture.
Concepts to Learn:
- Landscape: a picture that is primarily of the land and sky. It can be prairie, mountains, woodlands, etc.
- Foreground: the area in the front of the picture
- Background: The area in the distance (back) of the picture
- Warm Colors: yellow, orange, red
- Mural: This is a picture painted directly on a wall or ceiling
- Regionalism: a movement in art, the followers of which preferred depictions of rural American in a
representational style. They were aggressively opposed to the abstract art movement.
- Lithograph: this is a print made by painting from a flat metal plate or stone, by a method based on the repulsion
of water and grease.
- Visual Rhythm: this is a pattern (repetition) created by shapes or colors.
Compare Benton's picture to a picture of the master artist El Greco. What similarities can you see in style?
Hands-on Lesson 1
Taking your sketchbook outside and doing outdoor nature drawing is probably the best way to learn how to draw landscapes. You can learn about a variety of flora and fauna by just carefully observing and drawing them. If you are outside and attempting to draw a scene such as a view of a valley or some other expanse, it is easier if you start by drawing some single object like a tree or house. Once you draw this object, you can use it to measure the rest of the scene. Using this method, it is easy to get the right proportions. When drawing outdoors, a common mistake is to get the picture out of proportion. Another concern when you are drawing landscapes, seascapes or even cityscapes is the need to give your pictures both mathematical and atmospheric perspective.
Atmospheric perspective is the apparent reduction of contrast and the color of objects in the distance. This is easy to explain if you think about what you see when you look far away. If you are fortunate to live in an area of the country with mountains or have ever gone on a trip to the mountains, this is easier to explain. The mountains in the far distance are almost light blue. As each closer mountain range overlaps the one in back of it, it becomes darker and brighter. The nearest to you is bright and full of color. This same phenomenon occurs with the sky. On the horizon line, the sky is light blue, almost the same color as the distant mountains. As you look higher into the sky, the sky becomes a deeper color of blue. If there are clouds present, they become a brighter shade of white. This color contrast is caused by atmospheric conditions. Things such as water vapor and dust cause the distant light to be absorbed. The mathematical or linear perspective is apparent in the outdoor scenes also. The clouds in the sky appear smaller as they run toward the horizon. This is easy to see if the clouds are a layer of puffy white cumulus clouds. These clouds will also overlap each cloud that is father away. This same overlapping will take place with each mountain or tree as you look farther and farther away. Use chalk pastels and do the following project.
One of my favorite art lessons with students is to do a landscape using atmospheric perspective. We do this in chalk pastel. First, we begin by covering our entire paper with the color white. Then we use a dark blue at the top of the paper and a lighter blue to the horizon line. A faint hint of yellow ocher is rubbed across the bottom of the sky. Then you blend all the colors in a circular motion. Then we put a layer of lighter green and darker green coming toward the front of the picture. We put a lake on the picture, making sure the water in the distance is a lighter blue and the water in the foreground is a darker blue. Make sure you get your colors onto the page completely before you begin blending. You can blend with your fingers, a tissue, or a blending stick. One of the best pastel artists I know (who sells her work for hundreds of dollars) blends with her fingers! Do this lesson on atmospheric perspective.
Grant Wood
Grant Wood, along with Thomas Hart Benton and John Stuart curry, represented the Regionalist school of painters. Wood even wrote a manifesto, "Revolt Against the City" in 1935, calling for a renaissance of American art, which he found too dependent on European art.
Grant Wood was born in 1892 into a poor farm family in Anamosa, Iowa. He had a difficult life. He raised sweet corn and tomatoes and sold them door-to-door. According to Three Hundred Years of American Painting by Eliot, he bought a vacant lot in Cedar Point, Iowa for a dollar down and a dollar a month, building a shack and living there for two years with his mother and sister. Wood studied at the Minneapolis School of Design between 1910 and 1911. He became a professional designer while attending night courses at the Art Institute of Chicago. He took these art classes and odd jobs and finally became a teacher in public schools. He saved the money he needed for a trip to Europe, but left Europe saying that his "best ideas came while milking a cow," and went back to Iowa to paint. Wood said, "I felt I had to search for old things to paint - something soft and mellow. But now I have discovered a decorative quality in American newness."
His early works were outdoor scenes combining a bright Fauve palette and a loose, impressionistic style - the result of a 1923-24 trip to Italy and Paris, which included study at the Academe Julian. However, Wood was by nature a meticulous craftsman. He found greater inspiration abroad in the clear, miniaturist detail of fifteenth-century Flemish masters such as Hans Memling, and at home in the porcelain designs of Willow Ware. He visited Europe again in 1928 and went to Germany and Holland where he discovered German and Dutch primitive painters.
From about 1928 until his death, Wood developed hard-edged realism perfectly blended with his observant and sometimes satirical characterizations of rural life. His representational paintings showed reassuring American myths about the perfection of farm life. Intentionally aimed at an isolationist-minded, Depression-era audience, Wood's work found in the local scene a means of expressing nationalistic sentiment. He loved the realistic style of Holbein, but added a bit of satire and surrealism in his works. Wood caused quite a stir with his Daughters of the Revolution, painted in 1932. He represented three unattractive ladies looking distrustful and posing in front of Emmanuel Leutz's painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. With his picture of American Gothic, one of the most famous paintings in American history, he solidified a prominent place in the American art world.
American Gothic by Grant Wood
When Wood's extraordinary painting American Gothic appeared at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930, it rocked the art world and became one of the most important paintings in American history. One group of people believed that the picture represented America and its values, and the other group of critics said the painting was a piece of critical satire. They believed that Wood was poking fun of the farmer's way of life. Some people believe the pitchfork was a symbol of old-fashioned farming and others believe it was to symbolize protecting his daughter. Notice the small dot of white light in the eyes of the man and woman. Squint your eyes and notice how shading is used in the faces. Look at the farmer's hand and notice the detail and shading. This work is thought to be inspired by Northern Renaissance art.
A story about how he came upon the title and window is that he was traveling and came upon a house in Eldon that he loved. It was, says his friend Bruce Thiher, "A modest-style house with a gothic-style window across the street from the stockyards, and he found the whole placement of the thing rather amusing. I've been told that the window came as a kit out of a Sears Roebuck Catalog." Wood's younger sister Nan was the female in the picture and his dentist was the male. Daniel Schulman, curator of the museum at the Art Institute of Chicago says, "I think what strikes you from the beginning is that you're with one of the most exciting couples in the history of art …. They look dour and sour and four-square and geometric … you just never run out of this encyclopedia of detail." It is presented in a representational style, and is truly one of our great American masterpieces.
Concepts to Learn:
- Fauvism: a movement characterized by distortion of form and bold colors at the beginning of the 20th century,
often associated with the Impressionists.
- Porcelain: a hard, white, non-porous, translucent variety of ceramic ware.
- Realism: the picturing of people and things as they really are; not idealized.
- Palette: the colors used by a particular artist for a particular painting.
- Designer: a person who designs and makes original sketches and patterns, etc.
- Portrait: a representation of a person, drawn, painted, photographed or sculpted.
- Gothic: related to the style of architecture in between the 12th and 16th centuries, characterized by ribbed
vaulting, flying buttresses, pointed arches and steep, high roofs.
- Pattern: a repeated design
This picture contains one of the most famous portraits in American history. Do this less on drawing portraits
Hands-On Lesson 2
Students often tell me that they can draw anything except people. I tell them that drawing the human face can be made a little easier if they learn the classic proportions of the face. Faces of people have been in the same proportions throughout all of history. You can measure ancient statues or paintings from long extinct civilizations and the proportions are always the same. Some say that people are getting taller and this may be true in general, but even if that is true, the proportions of their faces haven't changed. The problem about drawing faces is that you really have to study details. If I draw two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two ears and some hair, it doesn’t make anybody. I have to take the time to draw specific eyes, nose, ears and all the rest. It isn't any face; it is a specific face. The difference is in the details! Every head is a different shape. Every eye is unique. Every nose is unlike any other.
Students have a difficult time with faces because if it isn't just like the person you are drawing, it really looks wrong. We as humans, have an ability to recognize others by their faces. We sometimes see someone who will remind us of someone else, but on closer inspection the differences come out. It is these little differences that make the difference in portrait drawing. Below (note: picture is in magazine) are the classic proportions of the face. They are guidelines to place roughly where the features go. I can tell you they are approximately where you will find the facial features on most people, but everybody is different and each feature needs to be analyzed and set in relationship with every other on each individual's face. Below, you can see that most people have heads five times the width of their eye. Also notice that the mouth is as wide as the center of the eyes. Ears go between the eye line and the nose line and the rest is hair.
Let's try to apply the classic proportions of the face to this well-known painting from the Renaissance (fig. 1). We can see (fig. 2) that Mona's face is in the same proportions as yours. In (fig. 3), we can see that her head is slightly turned to her right. This turning of her head makes it difficult to see that her head is five eyes wide. You can see that there's an eye's width between her two eyes; and her famous smile is as wide as the center of her eyes. Draw a portrait of a member of your family using the classic Greek proportions of the face.
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