The American Spectator : Rockwell of Ages

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Rockwell of Ages

By Paul Johnson from the December 2011 - January 2012 issue

Norman Rockwell’s America wowed England this year.

The best exhibition held in London in 2011 was at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and featured the works of Norman Rockwell. The show was also at the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, Rhode Island, but for those who missed it, the splendid catalogue, Norman Rockwell’s America …In England, by Judy Goffman Cutler and Laurence S. Cutler, is an excellent substitute and will make a welcome Christmas present.

Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) is one of those rare artists who have an immediate, intimate, and special relationship with the public. He does not need any explaining, justifying, or theorizing. What he does is obvious and the virtues it displays are overwhelmingly apparent. He showed how ordinary Americans lived, worked, laughed, and worried, had fun and argued, learned and enjoyed themselves, in peace and war, in the second quarter of the 20th century, in authentic detail and with dazzling accuracy in hundreds of covers for the Saturday Evening Post. His was perhaps the most sustained and successful exercise in social realism in the whole history of art, remarkable alike for superb craftsmanship, unflinching honesty, and invariable consistency.

Of course the art critics hated him, and still do. He left them with no function to perform. He spoke directly to the public, and readers responded with enthusiasm. He is as popular now as ever, and the Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where he lived and worked, and where many of his original works are on display, is always crowded with visitor manifestly enjoying themselves. The place is worth a visit not least because the locals are instantly recognizable as the descendants of the people in his covers. The little town is still Rockwell’s world.

Art critics try to dismiss Rockwell as a “mere illustrator.” But you could say the same about the Limbourg brothers who created that masterpiece of the 15th century, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, or the great Dutch genre painters of the 17th century like Pieter de Hooch, Vermeer, or Gerard Dou, or those splendid Victorians like Maddox Brown or W.P. Frith. Rockwell dealt in truth and reality. His figures actually existed and he made them live in a way no photograph can ever quite do. In centuries to come people will turn to him to know exactly what the Americans of his time looked like and how they behaved. No doubt his prices will rise accordingly, and indeed in 50 years’ time his pictures will no longer be on the market: they will all be in public collections.

There is another reason why Rockwell appeals. He portrayed an America which was democratic, freedom-loving, egalitarian, enterprising, and dynamic, which was sure of itself and its aims, and believed in its destiny. This was not the doubting, nervous, fearful, neurotic America we sometimes see today, with its racially hyphenated complexes and its pessimism about the future. Rockwell’s America was the creation of the melting pot, enjoying the legacy of Lincoln, the ebullience of Theodore Roosevelt, the vision of Woodrow Wilson, and the canny frugality of Coolidge. It was an enormously productive, fruitful, varied, and creative society and Rockwell painted its portrait and prosopography. All this gives him some claim to be considered the finest American artist of the 20th century, and this exciting little volume, price $35, is the perfect introduction to his work.

About the Author

Paul Johnson is the author most recently of Churchill (Viking). His books include Modern Times, Intellectuals, and A History of the American People.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (20) | Leave a comment Leave a comment

ConantheContrarian| 12.22.11 @ 8:35AM

America might have been a melting pot, but it was a white, European melting pot. No longer, and it is turning into a snakepit.

RCV| 12.22.11 @ 6:27PM

Well, Conan, you're welcome to head to the Bavarian hills if it bothers you.

Jacob R| 12.22.11 @ 7:44PM

I know..there literally aren't evil white people,they literally don't exist. All whites are angels sent here to save darkies!

albert constantine jr.| 12.22.11 @ 8:51AM

When I saw this headline, I thought it was going to reference Lew Rockwell and the Ron Paul newsletters, rather than Norman Rockwell. Some times it is good to be able to step back and recall a broader swath of history along with the straw's eye view of what is immediately in front of us.

Stefan Stackhouse| 12.22.11 @ 9:08AM

Rockwell created a lasting visual documentation of my homeland, a land I once knew very well but apparently hardly even exists any more, except in memories and in his images.

Moe Blotz| 12.22.11 @ 9:32AM

Dyiz think the USA is adhering more to Wilson's vision than that of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, & co.?

POST American| 12.22.11 @ 10:00AM

----The lost art of illustration aside----

IMPORTANT to remember, ROCK-well
was set before us even as Globalism et al
was ramping up for the destruction of
the very spirit his skilfully rendered images
were 'immortalizing'.

As NDAA passed just days ago, authorising
the 'disappearance' of American citizens
(btw----on the 22nd anniversary of the Bill of Rights)
---and as those FEMA camps wait on stand by,
it's VERY, VERY IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER.

----------------HUAC/ Nuremberg 2012---------------

Citizen Jerry| 12.22.11 @ 10:25AM

Sorry to point this out, but you're even nuttier than Ron Paul!

Mike Hawk| 12.22.11 @ 4:12PM

Press Secretary candidate.

rhoetus| 12.23.11 @ 11:02AM

Once the government was able to round-up Japanese Americans in WW2 without due-process, without actual guilt they can round-up anyone.

Petronius| 12.22.11 @ 10:18AM

The only remaining vestige of Rockwell's time is the herd mentality engendered by public schools. Then, it was grounded in hard reality. Today it's Utopian fantasy from which the nation will never recover. We are doomed because of the infantile crap most people believe, and the decadent lifestyle they desire at the expense of the competent Americans they vastly outnumber.

John Navratil| 12.22.11 @ 10:57AM

Petronius,

My kids give me hope.

JimH| 12.22.11 @ 11:22AM

Rockwell's America was less about what it was and more what it wanted to be. Even if sometimes falling short, you can say something about a nation by what it's aspirations are.

Vern Crisler | 12.22.11 @ 1:19PM

I don't think it's correct to describe Rockwell's work as "social realism." Social realism is ultimately a socialist or semi-socialist school of art, which tends to depict poverty, misery, and the like, in an attempt to undermine capitalist society.

Instead of illustrating the lives of the poor and the oppressed, most of Rockwell's paintings depict everyday America life, somewhat idealistically, to be sure, but without the taint of ideology. Only later did he dabble in social realism -- painting the little black girl surrounded by marshals, for instance.

It could be argued that such social realist art was all the more effective because it came from a non-ideologue, an artist who usually portrayed America at its best.

Good to know Johnson has a biography out on Churchill. I hope I get a chance to read it one of these days.

Seek| 12.22.11 @ 1:26PM

Norman Rockwell was heavily influenced by 17th-century Dutch realism. His style bears its hallmarks, as Johnson has argued elsewhere.

POST American| 12.22.11 @ 9:52PM

---------------------CORRECTION-----------------------

-----That was the -222nd- Anniversary of the
Bill of Rights.

Surely, ROCK--well would have been aware
of such things.

-----NOW, back to your nostalgia and D--NILE.

Richard Baker| 12.22.11 @ 10:06PM

Whenever I see Rockwell's images I think of the joy they give us as they remind us of what we can be instead of the whining complainers that we've become. If so many find his view of ourselves so awful then maybe they should move to Europe where cynicism and despair are ascendant. These views are not typically American. I would remind the complainers that Utopia does not exist and the US was founded by people who wanted nothing to do with the same evil brew that was Europe in the 18th Century.

POST American| 12.23.11 @ 2:01AM

----------------BOTTOMLESS LINE------------------------

And since Rockwell we've gone from
French fries ---to 'Freedom Fries' to
freedom being fried by microwaves.

AS criminal Globalists move forward
for the FINAL consolidation of the RED
China world TREASON OP ---what's next?

------Why, 'Rule by X-spurts' and
-------------------'DICK---tators' --that's what.

rhoetus| 12.23.11 @ 11:04AM

I still love Norman Rockwell he is still one of my favorite artists.

Vasu Murti | 12.24.11 @ 3:26PM

(The folk song below receives airplay on KFOG 104.5 here in the SF Bay Area during the holiday season.)

"Well, Jesus was a homeless lad
"With an unwed mother and an absent dad
"And I really don't think he would have gotten that far
"If Newt, Pat and Jesse had followed that star