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| "Cradling Wheat" by Thomas Hart Benton |
There were no movies, no radios or other inexpensive sources of entertainment, so the habit of reading was widespread - much more so than in student circles of today, where it is rare to find a young artist who has information beyond that provided by the 'arty-critiky' columns of the current newspapers or weeklies. Neophyte artists devoured books and attended Saturday morning lectures at the Sorbonne. They concocted theories, sought historical justifications for these, and the studios and cafes rang with arguments. Few painters took their easels before nature without ideas to test or exploit. Though most of these were immature and half-baked, some even ludicrous, they arose from a genuine and lively spirit of inquiry. And they fed a constant urge toward new and novel experimentation.
Salons and gallery exhibitions began to be held regularly, and they displayed the work of all the 'ultramodern' experimenters, including that of the 'Fauves' and the emerging cubists. Although I had been aware of the existence of this new painting, the impact caused by seeing so much of it all at once was upsetting. The emphasis on design and especially the very novel varieties of that, and the totally arbitrary use of color - or what appeared to be so - introduced me to a mass of unsuspected problems.
Although I was very enthusiastic about my various experiments and always felt that each change would lead to my artistic salvation, I now began to realize that I had done little or nothing in the way of substantial production. I could point to no accomplishments. I had not even exhibited in a salon."
To be continued
(Excerpts from "An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography" by Thomas Hart Benton.)
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