Mazow Wins Publication Grant

Leo Mazow, associate professor of art in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, has won a $5,000 grant for his book Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound. The Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant, administered by the College Art Association, goes directly to The Pennyslvania State University Press, the publisher of his book.

Mazow says that Benton is perhaps best known for his Regionalist paintings and his murals produced for such sites as the Missouri State Capitol and the New School for Social Research. "However, Benton's art reveals a deep engagement with senses other than vision, particularly that of sound. Aurality, voice, musical instruments, and the sounds of machines and recording devices are referenced throughout his work," said Mazow.

Benton was a self-taught and frequently performing musician who invented a harmonica entablature notation system used in music tutorials to the present day. Mazow found he was also a collector, cataloguer, transcriber, and distributor of popular music.

"My book, however, shows that musical imagery was part of a larger belief in the capacity of sound to register and convey meaning," said Mazow. "In Benton's pictorial universe, it is through the form and subject matter of sound that stories are told, opinions are voiced, experiences are preserved, and history is recorded. All that is consequential, or so the artist would have us believe, has both voiced and heard components."

The book will be published in 2012.