Conservatives whaled me for “degrading” America, purists for representing things, and the radicals were mad because I didn’t put in Nikolai Lenin as an American prophet.                                                 Thomas Hart Benton, An Artist in America, 1983

If it’s not art, it’s at least history. Thomas Hart Benton, New York Times, 1968

But it is art. Incontestably and splendidly so. With the politics and dogmatic arguments of American modernism behind us, Benton’s first mural commission can be seen for the glory that it is. Continue Reading