The picture above is one of the many works of art that I saw during my recent trip to the Brooklyn Museum. This particular one can be found in the American section that is on the fourth floor of the building. This work was painted by Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), an American artist who named it the “Louisiana Rice Fields” (1928).

According to the paragraph of information that can be found directly to the right of the painting Thomas Hart Benton’s focus was veered more toward the common man, the backbone of the country, so to speak. The text stated that his attention was directed more towards types of people rather than on “specific individuals and places”.

This gravitation towards the common, hardworking person is very prevalent in this specific piece. The painting portrays ordinary rice farmers reaping their crops. However, upon closer inspection of the figures of the farmers in the painting, it can be noticed that none of their faces are visible. In my view, this was likely done to develop upon the artist’s chosen theme of “types of people over specific individuals”. By not showing the faces of the farmers working the rice field, Benton may have been to allegorize to the fact that similar scenes of common Americans working hard to get by in rural and very suburban areas is one that is not seldom seen throughout less urban areas of the United States.

Another conclusion that I made from my interpretation of the painting was that Thomas Benton may be criticizing the emergence of new technologies. In this painting, that idea is represented through the tractor on the left that is exhuming the smog from the large exhaust pipe at its front, and the gray (the fact that both machines are a very gloomy and perhaps even menacing color may be an implication of the artist’s disposition on these technologies) truck at the right. Although it may be argued that these machines may make the work for the farmers easier, the Thomas Benton would most likely be a proponent of the idea that the long-term results of this new machinery may be disastrous on the environment. This can be seen by the fact that the smog that is emitted from the tractor’s exhaust pipe is spreading and growing in size, so much so that half the sky is covered in the black cloud (yet again the use of a dark and menacing color to heavily imply the artist’s stance).