A Social History of the State of Missouri (detail) - Frankie and Johnny 1936

Thomas Hart Benton made this painting in the form of a mural. The palette is really grounded and earthy, which serves as a foundation for the dramatic action he paints on top of it. Benton’s got these bodies flying all over the place, ducking and diving, using an almost cartoonish exaggeration that he also sees in the land itself. Those lines that delineate and define the character’s forms aren’t just outlines, they are a kind of emotional weather map. Take the guy diving away from the bar, for example. The angles in the jut of his elbows and knees mirror the upturned chair he’s scrambling away from. It’s like his body is echoing the chaotic geometry of the whole scene, a visual scream. You can see echoes of El Greco in the way that Benton exaggerates his figures, but also a bit of the Mexican muralists like Orozco, who were also trying to depict the social realities of their time. But Benton remains uniquely Benton, a regionalist with a flair for the theatrical. In the end, he leaves us with a question: does art reflect life, or does life imitate art?