Mr. Rockwell

I have never really been drawn to Mr. Rockwell's art,

although I have appreciated it over the years.

I had always thought of him as kind of 'kitschy'.

Then, this morning I read an article about him on

Smithsonian.com

(find the article HERE)

I learned to appreciate him as an individual that

documented history.

I saw some of his pieces that weren't so popular

and over used.

And ...

I like him.

 I like his art more, too.
(remember to click on the picture to make it bigger as it is
worth seeing all the details!)

Mr. Rockwell on the left.

Photographic studies for his paintings.

Just love these...social commentary.

Cute kids!!!!

As a grandparent I love this one.

Scouts, Policemen, and Soldiers

Just Funny, Ironic and True

And heart wrenching

Post Covers I Like

Love the design and perspective of this card playing cover.

And my total favorite of all time.

; )

The paragraphs in the article that made a deep impression on me are as follows:

For decades, millions of Americans had looked forward to taking in the mail and finding a Rockwell cover. But starting in the ’60s, when the Post arrived, subscribers were more likely to find a color photograph of Elizabeth Taylor in emphatic eyeliner, decked out for her role in the film Cleopatra. The emphasis on the common man central to America’s sense of self in 20th-century America gave way, in the television-centered 1960s, to the worship of celebrities, whose life stories and marital crises replaced those of the proverbial next-door neighbor as subjects of interest and gossip.

Rockwell was aghast when his editors asked him to give up his genre scenes and start painting portraits of world leaders and celebrities. In September 1963, when the Post’s new art editor, Asger Jerrild, contacted Rockwell about illustrating an article, the artist wrote back: “I have come to the conviction that the work I now want to do no longer fits into the Post scheme.” It was, in effect, Rockwell’s letter of resignation.

On December 14, 1963, the Saturday Evening Post put out a memorial issue to honor a slain president. While other magazines ran grisly photographs of the assassination, the Post went with an illustration—it reprinted the Rockwell portrait of JFK that had run in 1960, before he was elected president. There he was again, with his blue eyes and thick hair and boyish Kennedy grin that seemed to promise that all would be well in America

At the age of 69, Rockwell began working for Look magazine and entered a remarkable phase of his career, one devoted to championing the civil rights movement. Although he had been a moderate Republican in the ’30s and ’40s, he shifted to the left as he grew older; he was especially sympathetic to the nuclear disarmament movement that flourished in the late ’50s. Leaving the conservative Post was liberating for him. He began to treat his art as a vehicle for progressive politics. President Johnson had taken up the cause of civil rights. Rockwell, too, would help drive the Kennedy agenda forward. You might say he became its premier if unofficial illustrator.

Rockwell’s first illustration for Look magazine, The Problem We All Live With, was a two-page spread that appeared in January 1964. An African-American girl—a 6-year-old in a white dress, a matching bow in her hair—is walking to school, escorted by four badge-wearing officers in lock step. Ruby Bridges, as most everyone now knows, was the first African-American to attend the all-white William Frantz elementary school in New Orleans, as a result of court-ordered desegregation. And Rockwell’s painting chronicled that famous day. On the morning of November 14, 1960, federal marshals dispatched by the U.S. Justice Department drove Ruby and her mother to her new school, only five blocks from their house. She had to walk by a crowd of crazy hecklers outside the school, most of them housewives and teenagers. She did this every day for weeks, and then the weeks became months.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Inside-Americas-Great-Romance-With-Norman-Rockwell-224937822.html#ixzz2ggwYs15j 

'The Problem We All Live With'

Ruby today....

Thank you, 

Mr. Rockwell.

Thank you Mr. Rockwell for preserving

a time in history, a way of life that was so

sweet,

inspiring,

and 

wonderful.

Love to you all.

xooxx

d