Oral history interview with Thomas Hart Benton, 1972.

Biographical Note

Artist

Scope and Contents

Family background, reputation in Missouri; father's political career; trip to Joplin, early cartoonist job; Washington D.C. at turn of century; years in Paris, art movement, cafe life; populism, political and artistic; Bohemian art; capitalism and art; film work in New Jersey; effects of Armory Show; World War I naval experiences; Missouri mural; art criticism; walking tours of the South; Orozco; sculptural painting; executing a mural; New York Marxist groups, 1930s; New School mural; WPA lecture tour; homosexual influence on art world; social function of art; Joplin mural; work for Walt Disney; regionalist movement; representational artists and the War

Subjects

• Art, American.
• Art and state.
• Artists--United States--Interviews.
• Benton, Thomas Hart, 1889-1975--Interviews.
• Cartooning.
• Gallagher, Robert S., 1933-2002, interviewer.--http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ivr
• Interviews.
• Mural painting and decoration, American--20th century.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Paris (France)--Intellectual life.
• United States. Works Progress Administration.

Access Conditions

Copyright by The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1976