Thursday, Sept. 2, 2004 | 8:23 a.m.
Rockwell's time and place is safely framed for anyone wanting to revisit the nostalgia of an idyllic, dreamy America where families were nuclear, sexually aggressive pop stars didn't exist, and even the hobos and coal miners had a special glow about them.
Had Rockwell wanted to paint crotch-grabbing performers, he certainly could have found them. Had he wanted to paint a homeless man who had lost his soul, he could have done that, too.
But the argument and appeal with Rockwell is in how he presented a glowing rendition of America in the first half of the 20th century (despite such civil rights-era pieces as "The Problem We All Live With" and "Murder in Mississippi").
Say "Rockwellian" and most people know you are referring to a cozy home life, caroling at the holidays and finding love at the soda fountain.
"Rockwell's response is that he painted life as he'd like it to be, not as it was," said Linda Pero, curator at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., answering a frequent question about Rockwell's nostalgic paintings. "As a child growing up in the city, in New York, he was very turned off by things that were sordid and ugly."
In Rockwell's world, even the burglars are part of the warm, fuzzy America.
Beginning Friday, Centaur Sculpture Galleries in the Fashion Show mall is selling and displaying more than 200 items, mainly lithographs, memorabilia and letters, by the 20th century painter and illustrator. The exhibit replaces the work of pop artist Steve Kaufman. The Madonna painting was part of the former exhibit the gallery was taking down last week.
The gallery, which caters to mostly repeat customers who are collectors, brought the exhibit in after mixing in some Rockwell pieces last year in an exhibit of 20th century American artists that featured Kaufman, Rockwell and LeRoy Neiman. Rockwell was also featured in a small solo exhibit last October.
This is, however, the largest collection of Rockwells that Centaur has exhibited. The exhibit, which is not connected to the Norman Rockwell Museum, features many of the feel-good, white-bread moments Rockwell captured: popular Christmas scenes, scouting illustrations, portraits of presidents and visits to the doctor that harken to a more sincere time.
"The Problem We All Live With," which Rockwell created for Look magazine and portrays young Ruby Bridges entering a newly segregated elementary school accompanied by federal marshals, has already sold for $14,500.
A collection of original posters from Rockwell's "Four Freedoms" (freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of speech and freedom of worship), created to sell war bonds during World War II, sells for $8,950.
"We would love to have more original paintings, but they are so hard to find and outrageously priced," gallery director Rod Rodriguez said. "It has taken us about three years to accumulate these Rockwells. We buy them one at a time. They're insanely difficult to find. These are mostly from the original publisher of these pieces. We also buy from private collectors and estates."
Out of the closet
Dishing out thousands for limited-edition signed lithographs is not unusual. At the Norman Rockwell Museum store they're priced between $3,000 and $8,000. Rockwell's "Rosie the Riveter" painting sold for nearly $5 million at a Sotheby's auction in May 2002. His painting "The Watchmaker" sold for nearly $1 million in 1996.
Richard Perry, president of Centaur Galleries, said the demand for Rockwells has been increasing because of the $5 million purchase of "Rosie the Riveter."
"It reignited interest," Perry said. "He's kind of pushed up to that new level of 'Great American Painter.' "
Rockwell's surge in popularity has also been attributed to "Pictures for the American People," a national tour that began in 1999 at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and ended at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2000.
The tour reached nearly 1.4 million visitors, including children. It was accompanied by a catalog with art critics writing favorably of Rockwell's artistic merit, including Las Vegas art critic Dave Hickey, who compared Rockwell's work to that of Jean Honore Fragonard.
"He is a good popular artist in the tradition of American scene painting in the '30s and '40s," Hickey said. "Norman Rockwell paints scenes of life when it's OK. He was probably the last American artist who tried to please everyone before the niche market."
Regarding interest among future generations who know more about computers and terrorism than drying socks by a fire, he said, "Whether we continue to like it, the culture will continue to respect it.
"(His paintings) will last the way most American iconography lasts."
And through "Pictures For America," which went to major museums around the country, Rockwell gained new audiences.
"It was heavily marketed," Pero said. "Several notable art critics and historians were invited to write essays to the catalog. These were people who in some way admired Rockwell's work -- Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Hickey; and art historian Robert Rosenblum.
"That really gave Rockwell a boost. Once they came forward with the public with how they felt about Rockwell."
But, Pero added, "I think a lot of other people became public about how they felt about Rockwell. There are still critics who maintain he was a fine illustrator, but he focused too much on the sentimental, saccharine." That argument has been voiced by critics at newspapers and art magazines across the country arguing the popular illustrator's legitimacy as an artist. In March 2003, PBS's "Think Tank" show was titled, "Was Norman Rockwell a Great Artist?"
"People have always dismissed Rockwell," Rodriguez said. "Rockwell was designated as an illustrator. It set Rockwell at a status that was well below fine artist.
"It's only recently that people are able to grasp that art is art is art. Norman Rockwell is now considered by everyone in the world of art to capture a moment in time and place more than any other artist in America."
Those who will still turn up their noses at Rockwell, Rodriguez said, are almost doing themselves a disservice.
"People who are waiting around to be told what's good art, what's bad art are missing the point," he said. "Art is simple. Either it means something to you or it doesn't. The question is 'Do people who know nothing about Norman Rockwell find him interesting?' I can tell you they do."
Escaping into Rockwell
Born in 1894 in New York City, Rockwell was painting Christmas cards by his teens and as a teenager was hired as art director of Boys' Life magazine. He painted his first cover for the Saturday Evening Post when he was 22, a job he continued for 47 years before moving on to Look magazine, where he was able to create more politically charged and socially aware pieces. (While at the Post, Rockwell was forbidden to paint black Americans unless they were performing manual labor.)
Notable Rockwell pieces include "Triple Self Portrait," "The Gossips" and "The Connoisseur." But some of his paintings, illustrations and ads often captured a spirit that didn't seem to honestly reflect a particular situation.
"I see that as finding the dignity in the poor, downtrodden, elderly, young, very poor," Pero said. "He finds that dignity. So if you look at it slightly differently, it changes. In 'Fleeing Hobo,' where the hobo is running with the pie, why shouldn't he have this pie? Rockwell is on the side of these people. He's on their side. He's not just making them cute.
"If you think of his background, his having been brought up listening to Dickens, all these stories become a Dickens tale. He just wants to see the good in these things. He helps us to be humanitarian as he was in his pictures. He's trying to lead us there to the value of the people in their circumstances."
Regarding the glossed-over family and small-town situations, Pero may as well have been referring to the Martha Stewart phenomenon.
"Some people feel alienated because they feel it is an ideal to be achieved," Pero said. "A lot of people resented him for that -- felt they were falling short of the ideal."
But even Rockwell couldn't live up to the paintings. A tough critic of his own work, Rockwell suffered from depression and anxiety. The artist was married three times. He was divorced from his first wife. Two of his wives died suddenly; one was rumored to have committed suicide.
Regardless, his popularity was a result of the world he created.
"Everybody loves this man's artwork," Perry said. "We have no problem selling it. The problem is finding it. He's very much in demand."
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