In the 1930s Thomas Hart Benton allied himself with the Regionalist movement and was very vocal in attacking the French abstract styles.  Because of this, the opinion of most people think of him as a foe of the modernist painting.  His long well-documented association with Jackson Pollock (his art student and friend) seems like an odd contradiction to those holding this belief.

During the early 1920s,  he painted in all modernist styles–including Impressionism, Pointillism, Synchronism, and Constructivism. Both his foe’s and defenders considered him a modernist painter at the time.  For Benton, it was a learning experience to paint these styles, a way of mastering representational painting.

His pupil, Jackson Pollock, however, used Benton’s compositional principles to begin radical experiments in abstract form.

Pollock rejected Benton’s continuous insistence on realistic subject matter. However, the underlying structure of some of Pollock’s abstractions can be traced to his teacher’s compositional diagrams of 1926

In an interview in 1965, Benton told the columnist, Leonard Lyons, “It was obvious from the beginning that Pollock was a born artist.  The only thing I taught him was how to drink a fifth a day.” (Quote source: Thomas Hart Benton an American Original by Samuel Adams.)

Jackson Pollock became the excitement of the New York art world, the leading figure of the new Abstract Expressionist movement at the time.  The former student of the prominent leader in Regionalism overshadowed his teacher.  However, they were respectful of each other and remained friends to the end of their lives.

Here’s a little known fact:  The two men converted a chicken coop in the Benton’s backyard to make a sleeping area for Jackson and it was known as Jack’s Shack.