Thomas Hart Benton, City Activities with Dancehall from America Today, 1930–31
Having inadvertently entered “Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today Mural Rediscovered” through the exhibition’s exit, I was surprised to see Jackson Pollock’s Pasiphaë (1943), a pre-drip accumulation of hurried pictographs, on prominent display. Actually, I wasn’t that surprised, given that Benton (1889–1975) is probably best known by contemporary audiences as Pollock’s mentor. After studying under Benton at The Art Students League, Pollock became a lifelong friend, though the older artist stated, “the only thing I taught him was how to drink a fifth a day.” The relationship between the archetypal American Regionalist and “Jack the Dripper” has often been remarked upon, largely because of the disparity between the former’s homespun mannerism and the latter’s radical embrace of abstraction. But the commonalities between the two are, in pictorial terms, structural and real. The headlong rhythms of Pasiphaë are identical to those coursing through America Today (1930–31), albeit stripped of Yankee Doodle finery. Turns out “a fifth a day” was only part of the equation.
The Met has done handsomely by Benton, giving America Today—a sprawling, almost Homeric state of the union diorama—ample berth in its American Wing. The Pollock canvas is included as an addendum to the Benton mural, ensconced as it is in a side gallery with works by Stuart Davis, John Steuart Curry, Reginald Marsh, Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, and others. These pieces provide cultural context, just as a gallery featuring