Existing comment:
Thomas Hart Benton
Study for Bootleggers, ca 1927
Determined not to idealize the past, Benton sometimes explored the more unseemly aspects of the American story. In this study for Bootleggers (Reynolda House Museum of American Art), the final canvas in his American Historical Epic, the artist turned to issues of her own era. Politically astute -- he was the son of Missouri congressman and the grandnephew of the state's first senator -- Benton offers commentary about the failed polices and corrupting influences of Prohibition, the 1920 federal law restricting the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages. Overlapping vignettes picture an active black market in which a bootlegger sells directly to a moneyed client while a man carries a crate of whiskey to a waiting airplane. Beneath a distant overpass and under the nose of a complicit policeman, gunmen hijack a truck conveying the illicit cargo. By filling the scene with speeding trains, a sleek airplane, cars, trucks, and telephone lines, Benton suggests that modern technology aids both progress and crime alike. |