Our Town: Imagine the 2020 version of ‘America Today’

Dr Tom Ferraro

As New York City slowly awakens from its six-month slumber, Long Islanders once again gain access to some of the greatest museums in the world, right here in our backyard. I had read that the famed mural “America Today” by Thomas Hart Benton was on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so I got myself off the couch, jumped in my car and made a trip in the this weekend to take a look at one of the masterworks by the country’s greatest regionalist painter.

Thomas Hart Benton was born in Missouri, traveled and lived throughout America and finally settled in Martha’s Vineyard. He was commissioned to do the “America Today” mural in 1930 by The New School for Social Research in Manhattan to be installed in its board room. He was about 40 years old at the time and still a struggling artist and was given nothing for the commission other than a free supply of eggs, which he used to mix with the paint.

When I entered the room where the mural was installed, I could see his usual style in full display with all the undulating figures with misshapen torsos and muscular elongated arms. There is something magical about the way he painted figures and about the way he reflected the America of the 1930s. Despite the country being in the throws of the Great Depression, one could feel Benton’s overriding optimism about the American spirit and about the goodness of technology and the mechanical age. Each floor to ceiling panel was about 8 feet by 9 feet and done in egg tempura mounted on wood.

There was a mural of the Deep South with the harsh realities of cotton picking. There was a panel about the Midwest as the bread basket of America, a panel on the Changing West with its oil rigs and surveyors, a panel about the sweat of the steelworkers and the pain felt by coal miners, another called “City Activities” with all those saloons, dance halls, subway rides and movie theaters, one on the mechanical marvels called “Instruments of Power” and finally one called “Outreaching Hands” symbolizing the anguish of the Great Depression.
Such a glorious and precious piece of art and a clear reflection of a young, energetic and hopeful America. And as I drove home I thought of what type of 10-panel mural he would have painted today in 2020, a full 90 years after he painted this one. In this the time of Donald Trump and Covid, it would be relatively easy to imagine what he would have painted today.

Panel #1 “The Wall” In it one sees a big painting of a wall, maybe about 50 feet high. On one side are the Mexicans and the rest of the world and on the other is America.
Panel #2 “The Region of the Depressed” Here you see paintings of folks crying and consuming either Prozac, Valium, alcohol or smoking marijuana.
Panel #3 “The Children of Anxiety” Here you see a painting of 12-year-old boys playing travel baseball and their legs shake when they are in the batter’s box. In the background you see screaming parents and coaches and a few scouts taking notes.
Panel #4 “The Exhausted Middle Class” Here you have paintings of commuters in cars honking at each other , another painting of men falling asleep at their desk with clocks saying 10 p.m.
Panel #5 “The New Elites” There are some paintings of young Ivy League grads, all about 6-foot-3, handsome, well-groomed, well-dressed, laughing and getting on a private jet.
Panel #6 “Black Lives Matters” This panel is about street riots with young Blacks and whites protesting and lots of tear gas exploding all around.
Panel # 7 “Covid” Panel 7 shows many doctors, many people wearing masks, and many syringes with vaccine in them.
Panel # 8 “The Big Shutdown” Here we have images of hotels, airlines, Broadway and restaurants with signs on them saying “Out of Business.”
Panel #9 “Modern Education” This panel shows kids sleeping in front of computer screens in their bedrooms, kids playing on their cell phones and mothers yelling at them to pay attention to the teacher.
Panel #10 “ Instruments of Power” This shows numerous high-tech gadgets, including robots, artificial intelligence devices , surveillance devices, electronic red lights , etc.

Indeed, this is not the same America that Thomas Hart Benton lived in back in 1930. The instruments of power, which included the steam engine, the airplane and the locomotive, seem quaint in comparison to what our world looks like now with all its artificial intelligence, computers and instruments of surveillance. We now see loads and loads of anxiety, stress, depression, worry, paranoia, loneliness, psychosomatic illnesses, drug use and more. My, my — whatever went wrong over these last 90 years?

American remains a powerful force in the world, but it is tough to imagine that if Thomas Hart Benton were alive and painting now, he would have been able to keep up his optimism about ‘America Today,’ the 2020 version. What was once so quaint has turned into something more troubling and even sinister.

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