Review: Helen Harrison's 'An Artful Corpse' Is Third In Artistic Murder Trilogy

Although many admirers of Jackson Pollock, especially those who have visited the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, know that among the motivating artistic forces in the life of the famous Abstract Expressionist, the name Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) looms large. The muralist and avatar of the Regionalist art movement in Depression America (a naturalistic painting style and working class subject matter) not only mentored Pollock at The Art Students League of New York, but reportedly took credit for teaching Pollock how to paint the iconic pictures exemplified by “Blue Poles” — “I taught Jack that.”

Their signature works seem worlds apart, but influence in the arts can be tricky, subtle as well as overt, unconscious as well as deliberately imitative or pointedly rebellious — perhaps a moot point to all but art scholars. It’s likely, with the exception of historians of the 20th century American art, that Benton is no longer a familiar name. No doubt Helen Harrison, the director of the Pollock-Krasner House, was counting on Benton’s relative obscurity when she made him the murder victim in “An Artful Corpse,” the final book in her Art of Murder Mystery series, (the earlier two, “An Exquisite Corpse” and “An Accidental Corpse,” introduced characters who reappear in this one).

In a back-of-the-book acknowledgments, Harrison notes that she imagined a fictional demise for Benton. In the late ’60s, which she generously recreates in “An Artful Corpse,” Benton was not murdered as he is in the book. He died in his studio in Kansas City, Missouri, eight years after his body turns up in the top-floor studio of The League in her novel. One link, however, between fact and fiction seems reliable, given Harrison’s meticulous research credentials: Benton could be at times difficult, verbally abusive and opinionated, especially when fueled by alcohol, which was often.

“His talent for making enemies was legendary, even more widely acknowledged than his artistic ability.” Who wouldn’t want to kill him! His corpse shows that he sustained a double-sided six-inch blade wound to the chest, after a blow had been administered to his head.

The suspect list includes students, assistants, colleagues, critics, museum heads. A frontispiece reproduction of Benton’s 1924 oil on paper “Retribution” shows a sculpted figure about to deliver a blow to a seated figure, a precursor of the book’s prologue that is set on November 1, 1967 with the discovery of Benton’s body. The narrative then goes back a couple of months to cover Benton’s visit to The League, in conjunction with a Whitney retrospective of his work. He antagonized just about everyone with his outspoken America First views, homophobia and disdain for women. Still, some standards were and are admirable: figure drawing from life was for him “the cornerstone of art education.”

He hated what he saw as Modernism and was critical of the bohemian art community centered in Lower Manhattan, especially at folk song clubs such as The Bitter End where Harrison herself once performed. She includes this bit in a short bio, somewhat nostalgic for that magic, “tumultuous” time. Passages about the Village scene and its various personalities take up a large portion of the book, as do mini-histories of art institutions (including earlier incarnations of The League before it moved to 57th Street) and real-life movers and shakers in the city’s mid-century art world, many now forgotten. One artist, a prime suspect because of his outspoken hostility to Benton, is real-life Raymond Breinin, a Russian émigré, rendered here with lively wit, immigrant accent and all.

So prominent, however, are the asides that tend to cut into the narrative that a case could be made that “An Artful Murder” is more historical exposition than murder mystery. It’s interesting to learn that The League’s Renaissance Revival building was designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh, who “based it on a 16th century hunting lodge in Fontainebleau, France,” but such details tend to diminish the whodunit. Institutions appear along with their addresses and with short takes on their founders or administrators — Stewart Klonis, for example, a minor watercolorist who served as The League’s executive director for 34 years, gets attention.

Helen Harrison has read widely and deeply. Of course, she would know, if anyone would, that Andy Warhol was called “Wendy Airhole,” but such insider info tends to sideline the plot, especially as young T.J. Fitzgerald, along with his girlfriend Ellen, strives to discover the killer. Both students at The League, they are eager to exonerate a favorite instructor, but the pursuit, replete with scenes of their growing romance, seems secondary to the rich cultural history reimagined here, as Harrison goes down memory lane. How rewarding, though, if “An Artful Murder” prompts a visit to PKH to see both the Bentons and Pollocks.