![]() ![]() William Ivey, then executive director of the Country Music Foundation, recalled that Benton decided that the painting “should show the roots of the music-the sources-before there were records and stars.” Benton received $60,000 for the project, with a third of the money coming from the National Endowment for the Arts.Īs was his custom, Benton developed the painting from drawings-in this case, some old sketches that he'd made on walkabouts through the Ozark Mountains in the 1920s and some new ones made on a trip to Branson, Missouri, where he observed professional country musicians. Benton was happy for the opportunity to execute another public work that would address the folk culture he believed superior to the "intellectual curiosities" and “infinitely shaded egotism” of modernist aesthetics. Decades earlier, his art had been cast aside by critics, who viewed the ascension of Abstract Expressionism and Jackson Pollock, Benton's student in the early 1930s, as a confirmation that Benton's popular realism had become quaint and irrelevant. Though old and frail, Benton was enthusiastic about the project. The painting had been commissioned two years earlier, in 1973, by the Country Music Foundation, whose board members traveled to Benton's home in Kansas City, Missouri, and, over a bottle of Jack Daniels, persuaded him to accept the commission. He was a modernist, and he believed in progress, but his paintings tapped into a Jeffersonian image of determined yeomanry Benton reminded Americans of their original, if also mythical, sense of themselves.Īn often-told story about Benton is that he died in his studio just moments before he was to sign his name on his final painting, The Sources of Country Music, which he was making for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. Robert Hurwitz, president of Nonesuch Records.At the same time, his purposeful figures-he often painted muscular men and women hard at work-and his industriousness-he worked fast, drove all over the country, built his own houses, raised kids, fished and swam-assuaged a Depression-era anxiety among average folk and critics alike.Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, singing Bach’s “Ich Habe Genug”.Adam Guettel’s “How Glory Goes” from his musical “Floyd Collins”.In terms of the artists' side, it's respecting their art and their craft."Ĭlarification: Nonesuch was the distributor outside of Europe for the Buena Vista Social Club. ![]() Hurwitz tells Here & Now's Robin Young why he thinks he's successfully balanced art and commerce: "To the people on the corporate side, it's the notion of spending their money as if it's your own money. ![]() He's stepping down as president of Nonesuch Records (a division of Warner Music Group) next year to become its chairman emeritus.įor this week's "View From The Top" conversation we hear about his 31 years recording the music of artists of many genres, ranging from the Buena Vista Social Club, Emmy Lou Harris and Pat Metheny, to classical composers and singers. ![]() Robert Hurwitz has been compared to a great book editor by classical composer John Adams, and a master craftsman by Stephen Sondheim. Facebook Email Robert Hurwitz will step down as president of Nonesuch Records next year. ![]()
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