How many people actually like going to museums? How many people actually like looking at art? The Thomas Hart Benton: Hollywood exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum has a certain quality about it that makes it more attractive than most museums, starting from the crisp and pristine lights that spell out his name to the Exit sign at the end of the exhibit. The exhibit will have your attention from beginning to the end. Benton’s style widely ranges from the violent and yet valiant scenes from WWII to the more relaxed side Hollywood, the even his sculpting skills. Benton’s wide range of skills is something that only very few artists have and can display. His portrayals of slavery, the Native American’s encounter with the Pilgrims and Hollywood are all from a unique perspective that you don’t see from too many artists, his ideas were truly his own unique perspectives and opinions. Each of them had a unique flare that can only be described as Benton’s individual style.

The exhibit is captivating and will capture your attention from the bright, shiny lights that spell out “Thomas Benton and Hollywood” to the “Exit” sign that leads you out of the gallery. The unique perspective Benton draws certain paintings like “The Slave”, and “Custer’s Last Stand” with a distinctive finesse about it. The sometimes cartoonish paintings will automatically catch your attention, the creativity keeps your attention, and the detail that each picture includes will only leave you wanting to see them again. Benton’s paintings about Hollywood were all realistic especially because of a lot of the simple but very detailed sketches of things that you may see on screen during a movie, or in Hollywood in general. The tour then takes you to his paintings from WWII, Benton shows the gruesome side of war by illustrating the danger of the war coming to America. He also shows the valiant side and shows an African American standing courageous and proud as he is about to go to war at a time when African Americans were in a segregated army. If Benton’s work is anything it is in a league of its own.

As great as Benton’s work is it does have its flaws. One of them is that his portrayals of Hollywood lacked much if the imagination as the rest of his work did. Some of his other paintings were full of life, they were vibrant. Then when you go to his work about Hollywood and it makes you want to know if anybody died in that time period. The lack of creativity and imagination that makes Benton most memorable is kind of lost and left out of a lot of his work. It made that section look kind of bland. Secondly when examining his work about the war the cartoonish feeling made his portrayals of violence seem more of something to laugh at then something that should be taken seriously. If I had the choice he should have switched the ways he drew his work about Hollywood with how he made paintings about the war, but that’s just my opinion. The lack of creativity makes this part of the exhibit seem lackluster compared to some of the other ones. The distinctive flare was definitely left out of the ones in those pieces of work.

Despite the flaws I still would overall persuade people to visit the exhibit because the quality and individuality in his work is second to none and shouldn’t be overlooked. No other artist has as much quality and detail in their work as Benton does. They will keep you captivated and enthused the entire time and for people who like art, the exhibit won’t disappoint.