The Word is Out

Aspen author’s book features Tom Benton’s work

Posted in In the Press by People's Press on July 13, 2011

ASPEN — Leonard Lauder knows plenty about posters. A renowned art collector, Lauder has assembled collections of posters, which now are in the hands of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other institutions. And Lauder has more than a passing familiarity with Aspen, where he has owned a home since 1978.

Recently, though, Lauder had a gap in his knowledge, of poster art and Aspen history, filled. After his talk, “The Art of the Poster,” at the Aspen Institute last week, Lauder was approached by D.J. Watkins, who gave Lauder a gift: a copy of “Thomas W. Benton: Artist/Activist,” Watkins’ new book on the Aspen printmaker who died in 2007. Watkins pointed out examples of Benton’s work — particularly some ski posters, given that the Aspen Institute’s Paepcke Auditorium currently features an exhibition of Swiss ski posters from Lauder’s collection.

“He saw the ski posters and went, ‘Wow,’ over the design, the graphics, the Bayer blue” — a reference to the deep blue shade that designer and artist Herbert Bayer used throughout Aspen in the middle of the 20th century, Watkins said. Lauder was not familiar with Benton, but he took the book home, and it’s easy to imagine, given his passion for poster design and propaganda, spending time getting to know Benton’s significance as an artist, a war protester, and a key figure in the rise of Aspen’s anti-establishment movement. “That reaction is similar to what I think people’s reactions will be to the breadth and beauty of Benton’s artistic career,” Watkins said.

Benton isn’t an unknown figure in Aspen, where he lived from the mid-‘60s until his death in 2007. But Watkins believes Benton’s reputation is limited, more or less, to the work he did with Hunter S. Thompson in 1970, when Benton created the posters for the writer’s failed candidacy for Pitkin County sheriff. Among the 160 posters reproduced in “Artist/Activist,” a bunch are Thompson-related — including several with the iconic two-thumbed “peyote” fist, Benton’s symbol for “freak power”; and, published for the first time, the series of five Aspen Wallposters, which featured text by Thompson and, thanks in part to ads in Rolling Stone magazine, became big sellers.

Read the full article by Stewart Oksenhorn in The Aspen Times.

See the original article

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