Thomas Hart Benton A MONA Moment By Ron Roth Director Museum of Nebraska Art

He occupies a major position in the history of American Art in the 20th Century. His story is legendary, for it includes perhaps the most dramatic change of direction in artistic philosophy in the annals of American art. This Missouri born artist began his study of art at the Chicago Art Institute. His talent was undeniable, and he continued his training in Paris, immersing himself in the modernist trends in art. His first significant body of work was created under the spell of the colorists-artists who were exploring the use of pure colors in abstract, geometric forms. And irony of ironies, this artist, whose name became synonymous with conservative, traditional values in art, was the influential teacher of America's greatest abstract artist, Jackson Pollack, who electrified the art world in the in the late 1940s and early 1950s with his monumental abstract expressionist canvases.

But turn his back on modernism is exactly what Benton did, articulating and propounding a regionalist movement in American art which celebrated the common man and woman and the fabric of their lives. You see in this regionalist movement the church meetings and baptisms down by the river of artist John Steuart Curry; the stylized apple orchards of Grant Wood, the individual trees neat round bulbs bursting in rows of pure arcs along winding hillsides-their neat, patterned rows suggesting a serene regularity we would like to associate with rural life.

And, like El Greco, the and landscapes in Benton's paintings and prints writhe and bend in the grip of an invisible rhythm, a dance perhaps in the vein of the Shakers-mystical and occasionally escalating to nearly out of control.

This style has been referred to less charitably as OKIE Baroque. But at its best, there is compelling movement in his work that carries ones eye through his compositions with energy and direction.

In our next MONA Moment, we will explore the collection Benton's watercolors in the Museum of Nebraska art. This unique collection combines color and cinematic point of view on the subject of one of the great epics of our history-the migration on the Oregon Trail.