urban (read effeminate) culture. Artist George Luks adopted an isms of depravity, decadence, and destruction. ... All of these isms even more exaggerated masculinity by circulating a tall tale that are of foreign origin, and truly should have no place in American he had once been a professional boxer named “Chicago Whitey.” art.” Craven, in order to place his heroes—Benton, John Stuart His pictures of highly aggressive wrestlers bolstered this idea. Curry (1897-1946), and Grant Wood (1892-1942)—on a Luks was an obnoxious boaster, a brawler, and a drunk who be- pedestal, would demonize the European modernists as “impos- lieved he was the reincarnation of Frans Hals, a great master who tors.” Cézanne and others were condemned, while Picasso was acquired a reputation, probably undeserved, for engaging in un- accused of producing “framed rubbish.” restrained drinking sprees and for abusing his first wife. Homophobia was part of Craven’s demonization process. It Most members of The Eight, also called the “Black Gang,” was already a widely entrenched attitude, as prevalent in avant- worked to replace the image of the bohemian, elitist artist with the garde circles in Europe as in small-town America. Disdain for manly, vigorous, even rowdy painter who would tackle the tough sexual minorities was embraced by almost every social group and subject matter, whether smoke-filled bars in Greenwich Village across the political spectrum. The intolerant and authoritarian or perilous blizzards in the great outdoors. At this point the ideal André Breton, a leading proponent of Surrealism, condemned for American art was no longer the solitary explorer or pioneer. what he called deviant sexuality. More than once he refused to Now masculinity could display itself as drunkenness and broken allow any discussion of homosexuality, even within the context marriages (Luks and Ernest Lawson), bigamy (A. B. Davies), of a 1928 roundtable forum on sexuality that was supposed to promiscuity (Everett Shinn), or roughneck brawling (Luks). cover every aspect of sexual relations. Breton and his fellow “good old boys” chastised bisexual Surrealist poet René Crevel THE AMERICAN SCENE MOVEMENT (1900-35) for his departures from the straight and narrow. Poor The banner of virility would be raised to new heights alongside Crevel, already on a teeter-totter psychologically, having wit- the American flag during the American Scene painting move- nessed his father’s suicide by hanging and endured mental abuse ment. It was an era that art critic Thomas Craven would praise for by his mother, did manage to return to the Surrealist fold but its home-grown, down-to-earth style, as exemplified by the art ended up gassing himself. of Craven’s friend Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), who stood Back in the New World, gay modernist artists such as Mars- fast against the influence of “degenerate” European Modernism. den Hartley (1877-1943) and Charles Demuth (1883-1935) fought In his personal “macho” crusade Benton would join Craven in an uphill battle against homophobia, which was the weapon of ranting against the “deviant” sexual behavior that they saw lurk- choice against art perceived as having a “feminine” side. Things ing in the world of sophisticated art. Craven discerned a sharp were no easier for artists who deployed a more realistic or repre- contrast between the art of healthy, rural, hard-working Ameri- sentational style, such as Paul Cadmus (1904-99), who chose to cans and the mannered European bohemians and snobs. As late confine his work to private circles. Anti-gay rhetoric also served as 1949, Congressman George Dondero of Michigan railed the cause of nationalism in this jingoistic era. Craven declared against European Modernism as a threat to traditional American French modernism to be “an emasculated tradition.” American art. This supporter of McCarthyism declared: “So-called modern parvenus, “victims of a bohemian corruption,” were seen as a or contemporary art in our own beloved country contains all the clique of tea-sippers. Craven was especially disturbed by any am- biguity in sexual self-identification. He was suspicious of America’s art museums and university art departments, run by “a priest- hood ... infested with inverts. ... It is, in the main, ignorant of American life and cares nothing for America’s cultural needs.” More- over, he saw these administrators as Euro- centric and anti-American, “glorifying a decadent modernism.” Missouri-born Thomas Hart Benton was Craven’s answer to this new direction in American painting. The two met in 1912 in New York, after Benton had trained in Paris and experimented with various strains of Modernism. But by the mid 1920s, Benton had abandoned these efforts after discover- ing the works of Charles Burchfield (1893- 1967), at which point he began to paint scenes of rural America. It was around Christmas, 1934, that Benton’s Self-Portrait appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and the American Scene movement was born. In the feature article, the anonymous author de- rided American painters who had become Thomas Hart Benton. The Hailstorm, 1940 “spurious Matisses and Picassos” after the

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