Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock [Hardcover]

Henry Adams (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 24, 2009

A groundbreaking portrait of the intense personal and artistic relationship between Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock, revealing how their friendship changed American art.

The drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, trailblazing Abstract Expressionist, appear to be the polar opposite of Thomas Hart Benton’s highly figurative Americana. Yet the two men had a close and highly charged relationship dating from Pollock’s days as a student under Benton. Pollock’s first and only formal training came from Benton, and the older man soon became a surrogate father to Pollock. In true Oedipal fashion, Pollock even fell in love with Benton’s wife.

Pollock later broke away from his mentor artistically, rocketing to superstardom with his stunning drip compositions. But he never lost touch with Benton or his ideas—in fact, his breakthrough abstractions reveal a strong debt to Benton’s teachings. I n an epic story that ranges from the cafés and salons of Gertrude Stein’s Paris to the highways of the American West, Henry Adams, acclaimed author of Eakins Revealed, unfolds a poignant personal drama that provides new insights into two of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Adams, author of Eakins Revisited (2005), practices art history with a novelist’s narrative skills and psychological acuity, a sleuth’s instincts, a passion for aesthetic and technical explications, and a gift for sea change interpretations. In this utterly absorbing, carefully reasoned inquiry into the profound relationship between two painters, one reviled, the other worshiped, Adams reclaims the wrongfully maligned Thomas Hart Benton and recalibrates our perception of Jackson Pollock and his masterpieces. Benton hid his true cultured self behind the mask of a “semi-literate hillbilly,” just as his “technical virtuosity” is concealed within his controversial murals. An exemplary teacher as well as a trailblazing artist, Benton was mentor and father figure to Pollock. “It is no exaggeration,” writes Adams, “to say that Benton created Pollock as an artist.” Adams cracks the secret of Benton’s “rhythmic flow” approach to composition, tracing its roots to the forgotten synchromism movement and its colorful creators. Adams then offers arresting insights into Pollock’s life and work, from his utter dependence on Benton and problematic adoration for Benton’s wife to the harrowing consequences of his bipolar disorder and his complex inspirations, from Jungian analysis to Asian mysticism. Encompassing a stunning discovery by his art-historian wife, Adams’ commanding, corrective double portrait reveals myriad camouflaged truths. --Donna Seaman

About the Author

Henry Adams has been singled out by Art News as one of the foremost experts on American painting, and his most recent book, Eakins Revealed, has revolutionized studies of Thomas Eakins, another icon of American art. He collaborated with Ken Burns on a documentary on Benton, which was watched by 20 million viewers on PBS. He is a professor of American art at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Press; 1ST edition (November 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596914203
• ISBN-13: 978-1596914209
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.4 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #117,569 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Masculinity and art September 2, 2010

By Charles S. Houser VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In TOM AND JACK, Henry Adams, one of the creative contributors to the documentary Ken Burns' America: Thomas Hart Benton, takes a close look at the influence of Thomas Hart Benton on perhaps the greatest American artist of the twentieth century, Jackson Pollock. In this rich and insightful dual portrait, Adams first must rehabilitate Benton's reputation as a prolific, dynamic, and socially progressive realist who rose to fame as a WPA mural painter. Adams looks at Benton's expatriate experiences in Paris, the influence of the now forgotten school of Synchromism on his sense of dynamism, and examines Benton's eventual decline (dismissal really) in the eyes of fellow artists and east coast intellectuals. As a teacher at the Art Students League in New York, Benton enjoyed being an iconoclastic influence on his mostly male students. Pollock and Pollock's brothers, also artists, were part of this group. Although Benton and Pollock were quite different in many ways (Benton was quite learned and well read while Pollock was inarticulate, if not exactly illiterate), they were both highly driven artists who never really felt themselves to be artworld insiders. Adams is at his best when analysing the men's artwork, but he is equally comfortable exploring the psychology of their relationship. Since Pollock spent a good deal of time in psychotherapy, Adams's marshalling of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytical theories as practiced in mid-century America is not out of place, and his presentation of Pollock's relatiohip with Benton and Benton's wife Rita as classically Oedipal is convincing.

In the first part of the book, Adams reveals the abstraction within Benton's realistic paintings; in the second part, he exposes the figurative and orderly elements hidden in Pollock's masterpieces. "It's telling," Adams writes, "that Pollock considered Einstein and Freud the two most important figures of modern times: one delved into the structure of the universe, the other into the structure of the unconscious. The power of Pollock's great drip paintings is that they seem to explore both these mysterious realms" (p. 324).

The book contains 16 pages of color reproductions, but I found it helpful to also consult Ellen Landau's Jackson Pollock, with its exquisite color plates of all of Pollock's major works. (I couldn't find anything comparable for Benton.) TOM and JACK also helped me to better understand Ed Harris's well-made but often elliptical film Pollock. Adams packs a lot into his 400-page dual biography. Its scholarship is well-considered and never bogs down the narrative; TOM AND JACK is a book I'm sure I'll return to again and again as I continue to study and enjoy the work of these two great American artists.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Eminently Readable Popular Art History January 13, 2011

By drkhimxz

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Henry Adams has provided the general reader with an interesting picture of Thomas Hart Benton, the most notable of the American Regionalists, and the major influences on his work. Recent generations of art-lovers need to be reminded of those who established an American art inter-penetrated by the vigorous traditions of Italy, France, Germany and the Low Countries as well as the more recent impact of Asian and African techniques. Particularly welcome is documentation of the influence of Morgan Russell and Stanton MacDonald-Wright on Benton's concept and methods. (Aficionados of the American detective story will be interested in the review of the art historical role of Stanton's brother, Willard, who, under the pseudonym S.S. Van Dine, created the first modern American Sherlock Holmes, Philo Vance, in best selling novels and popular films.) In his treatment of Benton, MacDonald-Wright, and Pollock, Adams suggests the important role of writers, critics, patrons, dealers,museum curators and mass media, in the making of art celebrity and success. Willard Wright was very useful to Benton in thsi regard as Greenberg was to Pollock later. In dealing with Benton, Adams is on firm ground, having written books and scholarly articles, and having been involved in a Ken Burns documentary on the subject. With Benton's artistic and personal character established, he turns to the complex figure which is Jackson Pollack. Here I feel the reader must be aware of the degree to which Adams is retailing documented facts as opposed to hypothesized causality and personal interpretation. He is openly opposed to some noted students of Pollock, and often must venture into the always shaky ground underlying the analysis of personality and intimate interrelationships. The story is well-told for the layman until he engages with structural analysis of picture making and psychological analysis of personality. These tend to be at a higher level of abstraction than the story telling and, therefore, for a layman, are more difficult to follow and more in need of the skeptical, "maybe he's right but I don't know enough to say". In so far as Adams discussion of the relationship of Pollock's fundamental "rules" of picture making and those of Benton, one need approach with particular caution (as Adams warns us). In what is considered the best of his pictures, Pollock followed the (unwritten) rule for writing books that admirably suit the demands of a social movement to find guidance in all possible situations, write it long, make it very complex, endow it with a high degree of ambiguity, and spread the net of your canvas of words over as many possibilities as you can. His so-called "great" paintings have the visual components of such an approach and, therefore, lend themselves to an infinity of "interpretations". In addition, as a matter of logic, the greater the abstraction of a verbal or visual stimulus, the greater the number of concrete situations it may refer to. At any rate, Adams concludes that Pollock was never the complete abstractionist, that all his major works contain within them the core of figuration, and that this figuration and the manner in which the whole is ordered, is a direct (and, of course, legitimate by a student with regard to a teacher) extension of what he learned from Benton.
All in all, a book that can be recommended to the general reader, interested in how people live, and the more specialized reader who wants to see what is the latest on the ever-developing mythology of Jackson Pollock.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenging Read for Fans of Pollock February 28, 2011

By David H. Mattingly

Format:Hardcover

Tom and Jack by Henry Adams is sure to ruffle a few feathers, especially those die-hard Pollock fans who revel in the standard mythology regarding his career. I have read many, many books and articles on Pollock over the years so this one was refreshing because of the new information it presents. Adams has done a stellar job of defending his thesis: Pollock was influenced by both Benton and Synchromism both to a much larger degree than previously thought. Though at times Adams seems guilty of developing speculative arguments, he mostly sticks to the facts and definitely to the idea of proving his thesis. It's a great book and not only challenges previously held beliefs (that Pollock was a non-objective painter, for example) but, from my point of view, proves them wrong with room to spare. Highly recommended.