Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock Details
From Booklist *Starred Review* Adams, author of Eakins Revisited (2005), practices art history with a novelist’s narrative skills and psychological acuity, a sleuth’s instincts, a passion for aesthetic and technical explications, and a gift for sea change interpretations. In this utterly absorbing, carefully reasoned inquiry into the profound relationship between two painters, one reviled, the other worshiped, Adams reclaims the wrongfully maligned Thomas Hart Benton and recalibrates our perception of Jackson Pollock and his masterpieces. Benton hid his true cultured self behind the mask of a “semi-literate hillbilly,” just as his “technical virtuosity” is concealed within his controversial murals. An exemplary teacher as well as a trailblazing artist, Benton was mentor and father figure to Pollock. “It is no exaggeration,” writes Adams, “to say that Benton created Pollock as an artist.” Adams cracks the secret of Benton’s “rhythmic flow” approach to composition, tracing its roots to the forgotten synchromism movement and its colorful creators. Adams then offers arresting insights into Pollock’s life and work, from his utter dependence on Benton and problematic adoration for Benton’s wife to the harrowing consequences of his bipolar disorder and his complex inspirations, from Jungian analysis to Asian mysticism. Encompassing a stunning discovery by his art-historian wife, Adams’ commanding, corrective double portrait reveals myriad camouflaged truths. --Donna Seaman Read more About the Author Henry Adams has been singled out by Art News as one of the foremost experts on American painting, and his most recent book, Eakins Revealed, has revolutionized studies of Thomas Eakins, another icon of American art. He collaborated with Ken Burns on a documentary on Benton, which was watched by 20 million viewers on PBS. He is a professor of American art at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Read more
Reviews
Henry Adams has provided the general reader with an interesting picture of Thomas Hart Benton, the most notable of the American Regionalists, and the major influences on his work. Recent generations of art-lovers need to be reminded of those who established an American art inter-penetrated by the vigorous traditions of Italy, France, Germany and the Low Countries as well as the more recent impact of Asian and African techniques. Particularly welcome is documentation of the influence of Morgan Russell and Stanton MacDonald-Wright on Benton's concept and methods. (Aficionados of the American detective story will be interested in the review of the art historical role of Stanton's brother, Willard, who, under the pseudonym S.S. Van Dine, created the first modern American Sherlock Holmes, Philo Vance, in best selling novels and popular films.) In his treatment of Benton, MacDonald-Wright, and Pollock, Adams suggests the important role of writers, critics, patrons, dealers,museum curators and mass media, in the making of art celebrity and success. Willard Wright was very useful to Benton in thsi regard as Greenberg was to Pollock later. In dealing with Benton, Adams is on firm ground, having written books and scholarly articles, and having been involved in a Ken Burns documentary on the subject. With Benton's artistic and personal character established, he turns to the complex figure which is Jackson Pollack. Here I feel the reader must be aware of the degree to which Adams is retailing documented facts as opposed to hypothesized causality and personal interpretation. He is openly opposed to some noted students of Pollock, and often must venture into the always shaky ground underlying the analysis of personality and intimate interrelationships. The story is well-told for the layman until he engages with structural analysis of picture making and psychological analysis of personality. These tend to be at a higher level of abstraction than the story telling and, therefore, for a layman, are more difficult to follow and more in need of the skeptical, "maybe he's right but I don't know enough to say". In so far as Adams discussion of the relationship of Pollock's fundamental "rules" of picture making and those of Benton, one need approach with particular caution (as Adams warns us). In what is considered the best of his pictures, Pollock followed the (unwritten) rule for writing books that admirably suit the demands of a social movement to find guidance in all possible situations, write it long, make it very complex, endow it with a high degree of ambiguity, and spread the net of your canvas of words over as many possibilities as you can. His so-called "great" paintings have the visual components of such an approach and, therefore, lend themselves to an infinity of "interpretations". In addition, as a matter of logic, the greater the abstraction of a verbal or visual stimulus, the greater the number of concrete situations it may refer to. At any rate, Adams concludes that Pollock was never the complete abstractionist, that all his major works contain within them the core of figuration, and that this figuration and the manner in which the whole is ordered, is a direct (and, of course, legitimate by a student with regard to a teacher) extension of what he learned from Benton.All in all, a book that can be recommended to the general reader, interested in how people live, and the more specialized reader who wants to see what is the latest on the ever-developing mythology of Jackson Pollock.
