City Activities with Dance Hall 1931

Thomas Hart Benton's "City Activities with Dance Hall" is a painting that's more like a big, boisterous party, packed with people, stories, and swirling energy. Benton made it using egg tempera and oil on canvas. Look how he builds up the scenes, layering figures and events like memories stacked one on top of another. The paint has this amazing, almost sculptural quality, thick in some places, like the dancers' dresses, and then thin and transparent in others, giving it this incredible depth. Then you see a figure, mid-air, limbs outstretched like she could take off. Benton doesn’t shy away from the grit of city life either, and this complexity, it reminds me of Philip Guston, who similarly saw and painted the world in all its messy glory. Like with Guston, it is this kind of honest and open-ended approach that keeps us coming back for more.