Norman Rockwell

I’d seen plenty of paintings of the Renaissance period but I always preferred Norman Rockwell: his paintings “extract great pictorial drama”. Even better, they made sense (unlike modern art).

It was while reading Deborah Solomon’s article on Rockwell that I learnt that the man was “driving in the opposite direction—he was putting stuff into art” in an era where abstract painting “jettisoned the accumulated clutter of 500 years of subject matter in an attempt to reduce art to pure form”! Also, in that era, there was “an invisible red velvet rope separates museum art from illustration” (Rockwell was an illustrator: he drew for magazines, and even worse, got paid).

His theme was the American life’s “homelier version steeped in the we-the-people, communitarian ideals of America’s founding in the 18th century”. Yet, when President Roosevelt set a competition for the Four Freedoms series (depiction of America stood for) for use during World War II, Rockwell’s submission was rejected because, he was told, the government wanted stuff by “real artists”. The Saturday Evening Post published them instead, the drawings became hugely popular, and the government came crawling back to use them!

Rockwell was a perfectionist. Like the time when he drew Before the Shot (a painting of a boy who while waiting for an injection (shot) at the doctor’s with his pants down, inspects the doc’s diploma to ensure that he is qualified!), he went back to the boy who modeled for him to get the exact colour of his pants!

Turns out this attention to detail, this “fastidious realism” was achieved in many of his paintings using photos as the starting point. Enjoy the side by side captures of a few of his paintings and the photos they started with.






Comments

  1. KumarOctober 9, 2013 at 4:17 PM

    Your presenting of the photo origin of some of Rockwell's paintings are interesting. I have seen the three paintings before but I had not imagined they are derived from actual life, and even further from photos! Now I understand how he achieved his forte - the photographic way of detailing.

    While it is true that Norman Rockwell's paintings most often are as well laid out as color photographs, with very little detail missing his attention, as an artist he did something to the images that they stood out beyond what photos can do. You feel the time, the mood, the drama of the situation etc. when you see Rockwell's painting. Something which is part of ordinary life, at the same time something special will always stand out. And, despite his ability for photo-finish (!) you sense the art of painting when you see a Rockwell, not the art of photography. His imagery has been unique in the domain of paintings.

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