Tag Archives: Norman Rockwell

children being cute

Children being cute as a metaphor for superficiality. The new image of the child being born in innocence and the painter to capture that ripe moment of angelic realm before the inevitable gradual tarnishing of the soul. It was a … Continue reading

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full circle

Sometimes things become intertwined in a full circle that initially escapes us since the assumed understanding is based on enlightenment principles guided by the linear progression of science and technology where evolution is rational and explainable. In Donald Kuspit’s The … Continue reading

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smuggle the uncomfortable

“The contradictory works of storied illustrator Norman Rockwell resonate in an age of anxiety”, or so the article began. Well enough anyway. But downhill from there. There is a process of historical revisionism underway that seeks to place Rockwell solidly … Continue reading

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owens: exchanging hand waves

To separate politics from sport is a virtual ideal, not realizable, and similat in context to examining religion without a political context. The Jesse Owens performance in Berlin in 1936 showed how efforts to insulate sport from politics is futile. … Continue reading

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innocent no more

To follow up on Rockwell, and digress further into some of the implications brought up by Richard Halpern in his book, The Underside of Innocence, we of course cannot confirm the theory posited by him, but there does appear to … Continue reading

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norman the negotiator

Naughty Norman. Not really. Unconscious of what he was doing, or in the grip of forces otside his control. Not likely. Ostensibly, it was a play on innocence, but it was effectively not much different than a J.D. Salinger, Isaac … Continue reading

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forever young

To stay forever young. To defy aging. to somehow cheat the odds and glorify in a kind of infantilism; a taunting provocative sort of dissent, like children peeing on the living room carpet. We are definitely in a post-art age … Continue reading

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just above the knees

Syrupy sentimentality dished out in soup ladles is not enough. Kitsch alone cannot explain the enduring allure or at least interest in Norman Rockwell’s work. According to Donald Kuspit in his article “Art Values or Money Values” , Rockwell works … Continue reading

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the live adventures of norman and normal

Norman Rockwell’s paintings are impossible not to recognize.The first inclination is to dismiss his work as kitschy, sentimental drivel of an earlier more naive time, which does tend to pacify our own anxiety by touching the chords of a false … Continue reading

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back to walden pond

Rockwell. Norman Rockwell. Kitsch. Sentimental. He helped define American popular culture in a manner almost as influential as Walt Disney. His recreation of a phony artificial world that never existed. A fantasy world tailor made for the peculiar form that … Continue reading

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