Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry

Famous for iconic images of the rural Midwestsuch as American Gothic, Politics in Missouri, and Baptism in KansasGrant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry have long been lumped together under the rubric the Regionalists. James M. Dennis offers a fresh and sophisticated look at the modernist tendencies of this trio of American painters, arguing that the individual styles of Wood, Benton, and Curry were both mislabeled and misunderstood. Revisiting the artistic and political culture of America between the World Wars, he shows that critics and ideologuesfrom Time Magazine to the Partisan Reviewpigeonholed, praised, or pilloried the Regionalists to serve their own critical intentions.