Thomas Hart Benton's Jealous Lover and the Ballad of Middle-Brow Culture

Abstract

This article is about who or what art is for and what, if anything, art J. can do. It begins with the assumption that art can indeed function beyond itself and the specifically aesthetic premises that conditioned its production and that it is acceptable for the audience to consider such broader, cultural functions for it. In particular this article examines Thomas Hart Benton's The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley with an eye toward the ways in which uninitiated viewers might respond to that painting and how it can be read as responding to certain cultural conditions in which contemporary viewers would have found themselves. By offering viewers several levels on which to respond, as well as by responding itself to viewers' lives, the painting provides one example of Benton's desire, not to undermine high art in this country – as is often implied by accusations that his art is little more than kitsch – but rather to build the sophistication of the viewing public.