The Arts of Life in America: Arts of the South—Study

The present work is a study for Thomas Hart Benton's Arts of the South from his 1932 mural cycle The Arts of Life in America. Commissioned for the library of the Whitney Museum of American Art, then located on 8th Street in New York City, the works depict Regionalist scenes of the arts in daily American life. Of these works Benton wrote: "These popular outpourings have a sort of pulse, a go and come, a rhythm; and all are expressions—indirectly, assertions of value. They are undisciplined, uncritical, and generally deficient in technical means; but they are arts just the same." (as quoted in H. Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original, New York, 1989, p. 185) Rather than highlighting 'high art,' Benton celebrates the art made by everyday Americans amid the Great Depression. Arts of the South features music, focusing on a Holy Roller service surrounded by crapshooters, Black singers, and a resting farmer before a church. The present work is a study for the finished composition, now in the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut.