The Sheila Variations

The Boy Scouts were a very formative part of my youth, and I remember each section of the Boy Scout Handbook starting with a new Rockwell. Same with the covers.

I love how you describe them as worlds to step into. So true! I love each and every one of his works.

Thanks again, Sheila, for your kind and generous comments.
You're a love! Tante belle cose from il vecchio.

Jon - OH, I love that about the Boy Scout manual! So wonderful! Such a part of American culture - it's so awesome.

I once read an essay on "art" vs. "craft" (for example: sculpture or painting vs. quiltmaking) and the author suggested that one of the differences between good art and good craft (I have to specify this because too often "craft" has got the connotation of the horrible stuff Stitchy McYarnpants digs up) was that art is a response to human tragedy; an attempt to understand the human condition. But craft is a celebration of human creativity, a sort of "look what we can do with our brains and our hands and our souls."

I think in a way, "illustrators" (after all, that's what he called himself, though I'd argue he's an artist as much as many others) like Rockwell fill a similar role. Rockwell celebrates - in most of his paintings at least - what is GOOD about being human. What is worthwhile and meaningful. Also, I think people respond so deeply to his work (I know I do) because in a lot of the paintings, you KNOW that emotion that he's conveying - it's not a simple emotion, it's complex, but it's like one of those things where you see it and you kind of smack your forehead and go, "yeah, that's it, he gets it. He's showing it in a way I could not."

ricki - God. What a gorgeous comment. Thank you ... it's really made me think - that whole art vs. craft thing, and I think you're right on all scores.

Our county clerk has a print of The Marriage License hanging right beside the counter where, well, you get your marriage license. I smile everytime I go in there.

Lisa - really?? Oh, I Love that!!

We have The Law Student hanging in our office, and I wish wish wish I could find small prints of the Four Freedoms to hang up too. I love those, especially Freedom of Speech; that guy makes me want to cry.

Is that the guy standing up at the town meeting? gulp ...

Yes.

His face. Yeah. What a face.

I just tracked it down, Lisa and added it to the post. The faces around him kill me, too.

Yay!

I swear, if that one doesn't choke you up, you're a communist.

ha! Totally.

His hands - his face - the blue agenda in his pocket - and the little old man looking up at him and listening. That old man's face really gets me.

Okay, I'm crying.

My elementary school hallways were lined with print of Norman Rockwell paintings which I remember always looking at rather wistfully wishing I lived in that world.

When I was in second grade, I read the first chapter book I ever read entirely by myself which was "Rasmus and The Vagabond" by Astrid Lindgren- the good woman who gave us "Pippi Longstocking". I did not stop talking about Rasmus for months. After I read that book I paid particular attention to Rockwell's "The Runaway". It seemed to me that the boy in the painting WAS Rasmus and Paradise Oscar was a cop instead of a vagabond.

That year Santa, at my insistence, brought me a copy of that print for my room. It's still hanging at my parent's house. I still feel sort of wistful when I look at it.

I was always wondering if you had something to share about Norman Rockwell. My in-laws are from the Berkshires, and we go often to visit. Every family within the larger family has a Rockwell picture in their home, usually hanging over the mantle of the fireplace, and it's the same one...Stockbridge: Main Street at Christmas. Not one of his most elegant pictures, but the moment(s) this picture captures is priceless. Especially, if you know anything about the area, besides the lyrics form the James Taylor song. The great thing about the picture is EVERYBODY in the family has it their homes: us, grandparents, parents, cousins, aunts and uncles...and the one awesome tie to everyone's pictures (unfortunately except ours) is that they are all authentically signed by Norman Rockwell. When he was still living my wife’s father, mother, and their parents could walk up to him when he was working or walking outside in Stockbridge or Lennox and get his autograph or just say hello and have a quick conversation. That just adds to the charm and humble nature of this great artist.

Thanks for sharing!

His pictures aren't illustrations. They're novels.

Rockwell is one of those cases where appearances can be deceiving. In my youth, to the extent I thought about him at all I just saw him as a hack, tweaking easy emotions for a buck. As an adult, I eventually came to realize how much courage it requires for an artist - or anyone else - to steadfastly emphasize what's positive and good in our lives. What Rockwell did was important - not only because he was very good at it, but also because it's so easy for all of us to forget that we really do have a lot to celebrate. Even when he felt forced to confront an ugly subject, as with the little girl being escorted to school, he chose to focus on her quiet dignity and courage rather that the cowards who were throwing things.

The idea that what he was doing was easy is resoundingly refuted by the fact that nobody else seems to be able to do it...

Definitely one of the best ever. His are paintings that you can stare at over and over again because of all the little details hidden throughout. The restaurant that I worked at in high school was decorated with Rockwell prints and I always enjoyed looking at the one that was in our break room.

Count me in with the ones who love "The Four Freedoms."

The man standing up in the meeting to speak - I knew a man who looked a lot like him, when he was younger. Every time I see that painting, I think "That's Wes!" The nice thing is, Wes was kinda like you imagine the guy in the painting to be.

I also love Freedom from Fear - because to me it emphasizes what good parents do - the mom and the dad there, tucking their kids in, making sure they're ok, with the newspaper showing its ugly headline. And you kind of know the parents are going to do their best to protect the kids from hearing about the horrible stuff going on in the world as much as possible.

I even like "Freedom of Religion" which I know some have criticised because it's more "general," it's sort of a collage rather than a single specific scene. My mom had a Norman Rockwell book with that in when I was a kid and I remember looking at that picture and trying to figure out what different religions were represented there...

And I agree with what Steve on the Mountain said. That's why his pictures work so well.

I have never ever understood the opinion that he was a "hack". I just don't get it. Where on earth does that opinion come from? I'm asking seriously. "Hack" to me connotes lack of skill. Which regardless of what you think of Rockwell's subject matter - is an incorrect assessment. That would be like saying mariah carey can't sing. Now you may hate her style of music - and you may think the way she uses her voice is gross or not artistic - but to say that her actual VOICE is not good, or a bit out of the ordinary in terms of its range - is just incorrect.

I think some people mix up "sentiment" and "sentimentality". So they see somethign that has honest sentiment and scoff at it because they think it's sentimental. Not saying that's you, Miker - just talking out loud now.

Some of Rockwell's earliest magazine covers are really sentimental - little kids sitting on half moons and stuff like that - but he matured as an artist, and there's very little "sentimentality" in his work after a certain point.

My feeling is that the "hack" opinion comes as part of what I call the "The Emperor's New Clothes" school of criticism - where one person who seems to be intelligent and seems to matter makes some sort of a claim, and a large number of people decide they agree with it, because, you know, that's an intelligent person and a person of taste.

I think there's also somewhat of a strain in American "letters" towards wanting to reject that which seems TOO liked, that seems too accessible to the "common man." And Rockwell IS accessible. And I think some people have a hard time with that, because there are women in Ohio who have prints of his paintings hanging in their kitchen, they think that because that Ohio housewife likes his work, it's too simple for them, that it's somehow "tainted" by the fact that a person they sort of hold in contempt likes his work.

It's kind of like friends I had in college who stopped listening to certain bands "because they got popular." It's the whole "they are now successful and so must not be any good any more because the hoi polloi like them" attitude.

Yeah, that's an excellent point. Anything that is too popular is seen as suspicious, or ... the "powers that be" will withhold their true approbation because it has so much popular appeal. Like John Irving not winning a goddamn National Book Award. Because he sells too many books, frankly. He's not esoteric enough. And that's inSANE, as far as I'm concerned. Not that it's about the awards, obviously - but it does get frustrating when his writing is somehow not taken as seriously. The same thing happened to Dickens during his lifetime, too.

I am also not one of the "either/or" people and I was thinking some of them would show up in this post - but they actually haven't. By "either/or" I mean: they have a CHIP on their shoulder about ... abstract art, or modern art, or art that seems opaque to them - so they say stuff like, "See ... THIS is REAL art. Rockwell is REAL." You know those types of people. They drive me nuts. They have a chip on their shoulder about Picasso, they feel intimidated and pissed that they don't like Picasso - and instead of just having the sense of self to say, "Picasso isn't my cup of tea. I prefer Rockwell" - they have to turn it into an either/or thing in order to assuage their fragile egos. "Picasso SUCKS because you can't understand his work. Rockwell is GREAT because I personally understand it."

Picasso's stuff is a different kind of expression of the self - and it requires different muscles in the viewer's brain to really sit and respond to it ... maybe it's more intellectual, whatever - but I don't see a problem with including Rockwell in a great pantheon of artists. He seems to belong there, as far as I'm concerned - in terms of skill, and also ... I mean, who else REALLY does what he did? As well as he did it?

And obviously - this is all a matter of taste. People don't HAVE to like certain types of art - it's not about that - For me, it's in how they TALK about it. When there's that defensiveness there, that chip on shoulder ... I think: Huh, there's something else going on there. It's not about the art now.

But if somebody just doesn't like Monet, and says, "I don't know - Monet never did anything for me - I prefer the cave drawings in the primitive caves of Malawi ..." - it seems like it's an opinion based on something other than defensiveness.

Whenever I see that "freedom of speech" print from "The Four Freedoms," I think of Frank Sinatra's "The House I Live In." Both sort of symbolize that forties what-are-we-fighting-for idealism.