Dear Mr. Adams—Your article about my drawing in the American Artist Spring 2004 was deeply moving to me. Bless you always for your interest in my work

—Andrew Wyeth.

In 2004, when I wrote an article on Andrew Wyeth’s drawings for American Artist, I was startled and pleased to receive this note. I later wrote a catalogue on his drawings for the Brandywine Museum and he was an generous and enthusiastic supporter of my book on Thomas Eakins, which stirred up controversy in many quarters. I regret that it never occurred to me to get a snapshot of the two of us together. The one memento of our contact is a toy soldier that he gave to my son Tommy when we visited him in Chadds Ford.

“[Adams] makes the cogent argument that each painter’s artistic viewpoint, and creative technique, stemmed from the same series of influences that include Rodin, Matisse, Russell and MacDonald-Wright… An interesting story rife with personal drama and satisfying artistic detail.”—Kirkus Reviews

Examination of two brilliant painters whose personal and professional relationship affected the rise of American art in the first half of the 20th century.

Adams (American Art/Case Western Reserve Univ.; Eakins Revealed, 2005, etc.) captures the story of the strange symbiosis between Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), a regionalist and realist painter, and Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), a trailblazer in early Abstract Expressionism who became world-renowned for the drip-painting technique he used in his later works. On the surface, the two men’s creative approach was wholly disparate. Benton favored Americana murals that evoked the working class, creating paintings that made a sharp social statement with vivid color and dynamic movement. Pollock’s works suggest universalism within their chaotic sweeps and layers of paint; each seemingly undefined canvas invites the viewer to contemplate both the immensity of imagination as well as the smallness of self. However, the author makes the cogent argument that each painter’s artistic viewpoint, and creative technique, stemmed from the same series of influences that include Rodin, Matisse, Russell and MacDonald-Wright, as well as rhythmic and structural components first used by those involved in the Synchromist movement (circa 1912). Pollock absorbed these aesthetic principles as Benton’s student, and then executed paintings in an entirely innovative way. This allowed Pollock, a man whose adulthood was marred with what later scholars suspect was bipolar disorder (accompanied by bouts of alcoholism) to position himself as unique in an emerging modern-art scene. The potent combination of timing and talent provided Pollock with an opportunity to expand his creative reach, and he studied the works of other artists while approaching the most productive period of his life—but he never abandoned those techniques that were instilled in him as an inchoate artist under Benton’s tutelage. Though Adams’s prose could use some polish, his portrayal of Benton’s impact on Pollock’s formative thinking brings new light to Pollock’s murky process.

An interesting story rife with personal drama and satisfying artistic detail.

ARTH 271  (AMST 271): American Art and Culture: The 20th/21st Century
A survey of the development of American art from 1900 to the present (and the future) which will explore how art has expressed both American values and American anxieties.  Painting will be emphasized but the course will also consider architecture, the decorative arts, film, literature and music.  Requirements: There will be weekly writing assignments, a midterm and final exam.  Recommended reading:  Wayne Craven, American Art and Culture, McGraw-Hill, 2003, and Henry Adams, What’s American About American Art?, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2009.

ARTH 576 Seminar in Modern Art:
Modern Art in America: Its Sources and Meaning
An examination of the birth of modern art in America, and of the evolution of key concepts such as that of “abstraction.” We will go back to the 19th century, to examine influences such as Japanese prints, and will then examine the work ideas of key figures and teachers, such as Robert Henri, Alfred Stieglitz, Marcel Duchamp, and Jackson Pollock, and their conflicting notions of what modern art was all about.

Collected Reviews for Tom and Jack

Starred review for TOM AND JACK in the November 1st, 2009 Booklist.
Congratulations, Henry!

“Adams 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. Utterly absorbing, carefully reasoned…Adams offers arresting insights into Pollock’s life and work. Encompassing a stunning discovery by his art-historian wife, Adams’ commanding, corrective double portrait reveals myriad camouflaged truths.”

Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock.
Adams, Henry (Author), Dec 2009. 416 p. Bloomsbury, hardcover, $35.00. (9781596914209). 759.13.

Adams, author of Eakins Revealed (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

Carrie M. Majer, Publicist
Bloomsbury
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

A graduate of Harvard University, Adams received his M.A. and Ph.d from Yale where he received the Frances Blanshard Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in art history.  In 1985 he received the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize of the College Art Association, the first time this had been awarded to an Americanist or a Museum Curator.  In 1989 William Jewell College awarded him its distinguished service medal for his services to Kansas City and the Midwest.  In 2001 he received the Northern Ohio Live Visual Arts Award for the best art exhibition of the year in Northern Ohio.

Dr. Adams has produced about 250 publications in the American field, including scholarly and popular articles, books, catalogues, and exhibitions catalogues.

Browse through our online resource of Henry’s incredible collection of publications.