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April Issue 2005
Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, Features Works by Thomas Hart Benton and More
The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, announces the opening of the special exhibition, Thomas Hart Benton and Iconic Images of the South. On view in the Charleston Renaissance Gallery, from Apr. 15 through June 17, 2005, the exhibition presents a delightful selection of unique views of the Carolinas by Thomas Hart Benton and Charleston Renaissance artists offering a new perspective on life in the South during the Depression era.
Among the most renowned painters of American Regionalism and teacher of Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock, Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975) was born in Neosho, MO. Benton studied at the Chicago Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris before landing at the Art Students League in New York, where he taught from 1926 to 1935. By the 1930s, Benton was firmly established as a leading painter of the American scene. The South held particular appeal for Benton, and he traveled widely throughout the region during the 1920s and 1930s documenting particular life experiences that he witnessed along the way.
In the South's terrain and people, Benton discovered a connection to his family memories and childhood experiences in Missouri. He translated his observations into art, creating field studies on paper, many of which he later developed into prints, watercolors and oil paintings. Benton's cartoon-like figures, wonderfully colored and slightly distorted, offer a new perspective on life in the South around the Depression era.
The exhibition Thomas Hart Benton and Iconic Images of the South presents a delightful selection of 20 works highlighting Benton's unique views of the Carolinas, and similar works by prominent Charleston Renaissance artists such as Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Anna Heyward Taylor and Elizabeth O'Neill Verner. Though the connection between Thomas Hart Benton and the Charleston Renaissance artists is unclear, both created numerous images of the same subject matter: rural churches, revival meetings, cotton pickers, chain gangs and other iconic images of the South. This connection is most likely more than a coincidence, yet the question remains: how were ideas exchanged among these artists and who influenced them? The exhibition examines these questions while comparing works by Benton with works of Charleston Renaissance artists from the Gibbes Museum of Art's permanent collection.
For additional information
check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at
843/722-2706 or at (www.gibbesmuseum.org).
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