A Bunch of Softies

Tough-talking, little (5 ft. 4 in.) Missouri-born Thomas Hart Benton, most swaggeringly masculine of U.S. painters, blew into Manhattan last week and let go a he-man bellow at art in the big city. Said he to a reporter from PM:

"Nonobjective painting is a kind of cultism. It's one of those precious, pansy arts above the public comprehension. Every decadent society has produced these esoteric art forms which give the snobs a chance to demonstrate their superiority. The sooner Mr. Rockefeller tears down that Museum of Modern Art of his with all its nonobjective paintings, the better off American art will be. The only ones who hang around that museum are a bunch of softies who don't know how to drink or do anything."

Tom Benton, who does know how to drink--and who once exhibited a $12,000 saloon nude in Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe--set his own ambition: "All you can do is express your own locality, and, if you can do that well, your art will become universal."

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