In defense of Norman Rockwell

[james_davis_nicoll]

From a discussion of the American War! on! Christmas!:

But what she was really doing in the first instance, though, was standing up for America's aggrieved white Christians, a cohort that's watched in frustration as ethnic populations have grown in size and political power, causing Norman Rockwell's America to fade before their eyes.

Now it is true Rockwell's American includes scenes like this:




But not only is that a reference to FDR's Four Freedom's speech, Rockwell's America also included scenes like this:

Comments

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

It wasn't entirely knee-jerk, but rather a lack of critical attention at all. The revisionist claims that he was really good, it was just those big meanie critics who said otherwise are popular nowadays, but it's not particularly true. Rockwell was an illustrator, which is painfully obvious in his visually flat treatments (which is where the copious "he painted from photographs" complaints come in) and the occasional strange facial expression that was the bane of every commercial illustrator of his era. If the subject matter he took on was politically pertinent or artistically clever, his approach to it rarely was.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

As a formal artist, yeah. There's a difference between "good" and "worthy of critical attention," though, and Rockwell's worth talking about now in a way that he wasn't at the time--though he deserved more credit than he got, just for how efficiently he told a certain kind of story. He encapsulated a certain kind of bourgeois aspiration that Modernism was reacting against, both in his art and in his pragmatic mass-market career. Even that much was worth talking about at the time, but no one did.

But yes, efforts to fit him into the grand old tradition of American naturalism, like the Hudson Valley painters and whatnot, don't go so well.

ETA: In fact, one of the things you can see in the images in this thread is that he isn't one hundred percent sure how to paint black people. He isn't comfortable with how to transition from the edges of their bodies to the background.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

The picture with the kids and the moving van shows one of his shortcomings, when you mention "flat". Everything in that image looks pasted on, especially the kids. There's no sense of them being in an environment (the lack of shadows on the ground is really noticeable to me because I do 3D work and having someone look like they're hovering or pasted on stands out).

On the other hand, "Southern Justice" looks "real": the three figures are in that environment, touching the ground, throwing shadows. So he could do it when he wanted to.