Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell was the leading figure in America´s golden age of illustration and he is considered as one of America´s greatest artists. In the first half of the 20th century, before there was TV and a culture of visual bombardement, illustration was the primary source of visualisation and visual storytelling. Innocence was there too: traditionalism, family values, the spirit of the American pioneer was still prevalent, the dawn of a new age of modernisation, urbanisation, technological advancement etc. seemed to be, due to rising living standards, a promising one as well, resulting in a climate of optimism and a hope for reconciliation of opposites. This added up for the art of illustration to blossom, and Norman Rockwell was the finest flower to bloom through this period; and also after it. Over the course of 40 years he created more than 300 cover artworks for the Saturday Evening Post depicting not only contemporary affairs but, moreover, the spirit of the age in an unimitably charming way. Recollections of an unburdened and happy childhood, family and neighborhood affairs, communal and, finally, national topics are prevalent. In their spirit of the American pioneer, they depict people aiming at taking responsibility, engaging in innocent fantasies and hoping for something and, generally, supporting and approving each other. People approving and supporting each other: that may be the core element of the illustrations of Norman Rockwell. Bad people, including fine artists and fine art critics, have derided this as kitsch and of creating a false consciousness of an American idyll that, in such a way, would not exist. Rockwell, yet, was, in general, right with his optimism; for the more profound part, he depicts the bonds, and our sentiments for bonds, that keep us together for good. He depicts a human humanity. You know, art, at its innermost self and substance, is about creating bonds, associations that magically add up, relationships that are established from the invisible, by the faculty of our sentience, that are there for good and that create a stable network that makes a more solid and liveable world. Therein, the kitschy illustrator Norman Rockwell acutally always operated from the core of what is the spirit of art. He lived in a state of constant bliss and enchantment. Despite recurrent motives and being formulaic, his illustrations always come in the most unexpected way; like the blooming charm of his depictions the freshness of his creativity and the innocence of his perception – as well as the charmingly critical spirit – never got drained. Norman Rockwell´s idealism and his belief in the nobility of the American national character, as well as his optimism, was for real. He was America´s Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, our Austrian painter of the Biedermeier age. After the decline of the Saturday Evening Post and illustration in a more general way, yet the uprise of minorities and of a spirit of a more critical self reflection of America, Norman Rockwell found other outfits and included issues of race. Over all the decades before, the world depicted by him had been a white world; the guideline of magazines was not to depict black Americans in any other than a subservient position so as not to probably unsettle parts of white readers; and Rockwell in general did not want to unsettle people and make them feel uneasy. The Problem We All Live With, depicting little Ruby Bridges walking her path through an outrageously racist society, did become an icon of the Civil Rights Movement – and one of Rockwell´s finest expressions of his genius of articulation and grasping the substance of social and human issues. Behind the so-called facade, Norman Rockwell frequently suffered from depression, and his second wife, Mary, succumbed to alcoholism, depression and an untimely death, not least as the burden of playing the American role model family to the entire nation became to heavy to her. Depiste being wealthy and beloved by the nation, the fine art world did not take Norman Rockwell serious and derided him. He, by constrast, and due to man´s deplorable tendency to often view the grass greener on the other side, ever more sought to be a „true“ artist and developed an inferiority complex out of being a „mere“ illustrator, which added to his depression. Rembrandt was his favorite artist; yet it were the Abstract Expressionists who, after years of starvation, caused a tectonic shift, as they finally and irrevocably put America on the global map of high art in the 1950s. Many of the Abstract Expressionists continued to have a troubled, if not short life even after they had gained fame, yet Rockwell, in a way, internally competed with them. The Conaisseur depicts Rockwell in an obvious competition with the, then, late Jackson Pollock, whom he masterly and unexpectedly imitated, seemingly setting the question about who is the greatest American painter: Jackson Pollok – or Norman Rockwell? Great art is transcendent and jenseitig, opening up a spacetime of endless imagination and possibilities and confronting man with it: in order to transcend man and evoke his higher self: and Jackson Pollock clearly was the master of his time, and one of the masters of any time in this regard. Yet art is also this-worldy, diesseitig: „kitsch“ shows a universal perspective, a global common human denominator, it shows that we are embedded and that we are, safely, „at home“, due to magical, invisible, yet humble and all-present bonds of sentience between humans and between creatures. Norman Rockwell, in his state of bliss, probably was too simple-minded to truly succeed at „fine“ art and to grasp the necessary philosophy like Pollock (silently) did. Yet the endless rooms his mind is able to always open up, with astonishing facility and freshness, his grasp upon substance and essence, and his genius articulateness, makes him governor, makes him king, in the this-wordly realm. While Pollock likely has reached an absolute peak experience of creativity and, therefore, may have lost momentum afterwards forever, I guess that Norman Rockwell was one of that kind of creatives that simply go on and continue to create, untouched by anything, and adaptable to anything, forever. He lived from 1894 to 1978. Times have become considerably more cyncial. Therefore I wonder what he would do, triumphantly, now. Norman Fucking Rockwell.