{"title":"Ben Messick","description":"\u003ctable id=\"t01\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"\/collections\/rip-matteson\"\u003e\u003ci class=\"fas fa-angle-left\"\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e Previous Artist\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"\/collections\/hope-meryman\"\u003eNext Artist \u003ci class=\"fas fa-angle-right\"\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/tbody\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n\u003ch2 style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003eBen Messick (1891-1981)\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2419\/6295\/files\/IMG_8974_b32fac45-c6d0-438e-8e03-0af970114527_480x480.jpg?v=1779562097\" alt=\"\" style=\"float: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c!--Start tab labels--\u003e\n\u003cul class=\"tabs\"\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca class=\"active\" href=\"#tab1\"\u003eThe Art\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"#tab2\"\u003eBiography\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c!--Start tab content--\u003e\n\u003cul class=\"tabs-content\"\u003e\n\u003cli class=\"active\" id=\"tab1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli id=\"tab2\"\u003eBenjamin Newton Messick (1891–1981), known professionally as Ben Messick, was an American painter, muralist and printmaker whose career spanned the formative decades of twentieth-century American modernism and the look of “California art.” Best known for his powerful WPA-era lithographs, public murals, and socially observant depictions of everyday American life in oils, Messick occupied a significant place within the artistic culture shaped by the New Deal and the rise of public art in the United States. His work combined the directness of American Scene painting with the draftsmanship and humanistic focus associated with the Ashcan School, resulting in compositions that captured both the hardship and vitality of urban and working-class experiences. His lithographs were given a solo exhibition at the Pasadena Art Institute in 1946 and his paintings were exhibited at the M.H. de Young Museum of San Francisco in 1947 in a one-man show. Ben Messick was the great-uncle of Lost Art Salon co-founder Rob Delamater, whose childhood visits to his Uncle Ben’s studio left a lasting impression and helped shape his vision of what the atmosphere of an art gallery could be. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2419\/6295\/files\/IMG_8975_240x240.jpg?v=1779562096\" alt=\"\" style=\"margin-right: 10px; float: left;\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\nMessick was born near Stafford, Missouri in 1891, a poor, rural area in the Ozark hills. Like many artists of his generation, his worldview was profoundly shaped by war, labor, poverty, and the rapid modernization of American society in the early twentieth century. Early in life he was deeply influenced by the rural characters who frequented his grandfather's country store, known locally as “Jugtown”. He served in France during World War I and settled in the Los Angeles area. He enrolled at the Chouinard School of Art in Los Angeles in 1925. Chouinard—one of the most important art schools on the West Coast—played a central role in shaping modern California art, and Messick would later return there as an instructor during the 1940s and 1950s. He also worked intermittently as an illustrator for both Disney Studios and MGM. In 1949 Messick married fellow artist Velma Hay Messick (1902-2001), and together they operated the Messick-Hay Studio in Long Beach, California. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMessick emerged as an artist during a period when American painters and printmakers increasingly turned their attention toward scenes of ordinary life and everyday people rather than academic or European subjects. He possessed an exceptional ability to convey psychological character through gesture and facial expression, rendering his subjects with a mixture of empathy, humor, and social awareness. These qualities made him particularly well suited to the goals of the federal art programs established during the Great Depression. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeginning in 1934, Messick was employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project. The WPA employed thousands of artists, muralists, printmakers, sculptors, and educators, providing critical financial support while also centering the role of public art in American life. Messick worked on numerous WPA mural projects throughout Southern California and also contributed to federal mural commissions connected to the United States Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. His murals reflected the New Deal commitment to creating accessible public art rooted in civic identity and shared social experience. Although his mural work formed an important component of his career, it was in lithography that Messick achieved some of his most enduring artistic accomplishments. Messick also worked with the WPA  “Easels Division”, for which many of these drawings and lithographs were made. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMessick’s WPA-era lithographs stand among the most compelling examples of socially conscious American printmaking from the Depression period. Executed with extraordinary technical fluency, these works depicted scenes of working-class life, city parks, nightlife, courtrooms, cafés, laborers, and street culture. Rather than idealizing his subjects, Messick approached them with keen observation and emotional nuance, capturing the exhaustion, resilience, humor, and isolation that defined modern life during the Depression years. Messick also drew and painted from memory, recalling his childhood years in the Ozark hills of Missouri near Springfield. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMessick’s work was exhibited widely during his lifetime and entered numerous museum and institutional collections. His artworks are held in collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Laguna Art Museum, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, and the Springfield Art Museum (which holds a major collection of his work), among others. His career and WPA experiences were also documented through an oral history interview conducted in 1965 for the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art as part of its landmark “New Deal and the Arts” project. \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/lostartsalon.com\/collections\/ben-messick\"\u003eView All\u003c\/a\u003e \u003cspan style=\"color: #ffffff;\"\u003e_\u003c\/span\u003e|\u003cspan style=\"color: #ffffff;\"\u003e_\u003c\/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/lostartsalon.com\/collections\/ben-messick\/available?sort_by=\"\u003eView Available\u003c\/a\u003e \u003cspan style=\"color: #ffffff;\"\u003e_\u003c\/span\u003e|\u003cspan style=\"color: #ffffff;\"\u003e_\u003c\/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/lostartsalon.com\/collections\/ben-messick\/sold?sort_by=\"\u003eView Sold\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2419\/6295\/collections\/messick-new1.jpg?v=1779565776","url":"https:\/\/lostartsalon.com\/collections\/ben-messick\/sold.oembed","provider":"Lost Art Salon","version":"1.0","type":"link"}