Details of Threshing Wheat (1938-1939)
Thomas Hart Benton
Egg tempera and oil paint
Viewed at the Swope Art Museum
Threshing Wheat At the Swope art museum there is an abundant amount of art work that possesses the qualities to capture the eye. However I specifically noticed the piece “Threshing Wheat” by Thomas Hart Benton was equivalently capable of catching my attention and having me focus on the painting. The moderately warm colors of the painting essentially speculate the warmth of the day in the painting and the high temperature of being outdoors and threshing real wheat. The organic shapes of the hardworking men and machinery in the picture display a human like connection with the painting, making you sympathetic by their exhaustion from working. The implied motion gives the impression that a still photograph of the men had been taken, because they still proceed to have an entire days work left ahead of them. The depth influenced in the painting is able to produce the illusion of the enormous hayfields in the background, giving the spectator an authentic “As far as the eye can see” view. The horizontal equity of the painting guides the illusion of a distantly extended hay field, while a potential hierarchal scale presented contributes the concept that the greater the object the more relevant they are to prosperous harvesting displaying the vehicles and hay machines being the largest while the horses are not as adequate in size and the actual farmers being the minimal size.
The symbolisms of the colors also proposes the interpretation that the earthly, natural objects an example being the landscape, horses and sky are earthly colors like brown, yellow, green and blue. While the machines and exhaust is dark or murky and colored in a depressing damaging way. The black smoke is gliding across the complete painting displaying essentially a development in industrial output but also the annihilation of the past, and more