economy of Kansas City in the 1940s was largely based on agriculture, which in turn was both dependent on the water supply and vulnerable to flooding from the Missouri and Kaw rivers. The Army Corps of Engineers had begun flood-control efforts on the Missouri when Benton was creating the work, and American agricultural bounty was contributing to the post-war rebuilding of Europe through the Marshall Plan. The mural was in part Benton's response to criticism from H.W. Janson of the nationalist ideology he perceived in the art of Benton and fellow Regionalist painters. A few weeks before Benton began work, Janson had published the second of two lengthy articles criticizing the Regionalists for "racial and national chauvinism." The mythologizing of Midwestern themes was intended to grant them a universal significance, but for Janson this approach recalled the recasting of Greek myths in contemporary settings under Nazi Germany. Aesthetic considerations Achelous and Hercules also served as Benton's assertion of the figurative mode in contrast to the abstract expressionism of his former student Jackson Pollock. The critical reception of this effort was not always positive: "More often than not, ... Benton's mythic visions of the Midwest looked more lewd or awkward than eternally noble. Achelous and Hercules is unnaturally stylized, as Midwestern maids take balletic leaps through the air and farmers pose like toreadors in a bullring." References External links Smithsonian American Art Museum, Achelous and Hercules, Educational Insights "Zoom It" feature Elizabeth Broun, Smithsonian American Art Museum, "Celebrating American Abundance," Director's Choice tour Murals in the United States 20th-century allegorical paintings Allegorical paintings by American artists Paintings by Thomas Hart Benton Paintings depicting Heracles Culture of Kansas City, Missouri 1947 paintings Paintings in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Cattle in art