Midwest 1931

Thomas Hart Benton made this painting, Midwest, with oil on canvas, and what strikes me is how he manages to make the flat feel so spatial. Look at how Benton uses color to define form, but also to flatten it out again. The blues and browns are earthy, grounding the scene, but the way he carves out the figures and landscape with these colors creates a push and pull. It’s like he's building up the forms with color, then knocking them back down again. See how the saw cuts across the foreground, that jagged line slicing through the space, it reminds me of a Lichtenstein, or maybe Stuart Davis, bringing a sense of almost comic book dynamism and stylisation. Benton's interest in Americana reminds me of Charles Sheeler, both artists exploring the industrial landscape, but with a very different sensibility. Benton's is more about the figure, the human element, but still he understood art as a conversation, an ongoing process of seeing and responding.