Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence Details
Review "Rockwell and his images remain central to twentieth-century U.S. cultural history, too popular to ignore and yet, as Halpern reveals, more complex than many concede." (Julia L. Foulkes The Historian) Read more About the Author Richard Halpern is professor of English at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author several books, including Shakespeare among the Moderns and Shakespeare’s Perfume. Read more
Reviews
"Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence" by Richard Halpern offers an unique perspective about the art of Norman Rockwell. Although Rockwell has heretofore largely been dismissed by serious art historians as a painter of kitschy sentimentality, Mr. Halpern's interdisciplinary study opens up new lines of inquiry into the meaning of Rockwell's work. In this intriguing and exceptionally well-written book, Mr. Halpern succeeds in demonstrating how Rockwell's best paintings transcended the medium of commercial illustration for which they were originally produced and should rightly be appreciated on their own merits as enduring works of art. Thanks to Mr. Halpern's sophisticated analysis, we can look at these images with fresh eyes and begin to appreciate Rockwell's art anew.In particular, Mr. Halpern's keen understanding of art, Freudianism and American culture helps us to discover hidden meanings contained within some of Rockwell's most successful paintings while providing insight into the artist's life and times. According to Mr. Halpern, the key to uncovering Rockwell's greatness lies in our willingness to see these images as the products of a fallible human being who desired to be a better person and to inhabit a better world. Within many of Rockwell's finest paintings, the ideal and the real coexist; yet the deeper meanings of these works have often been denied to us due to our own underlying discomforts and cultural assumptions.For example, among the many middlebrow viewers for whom Rockwell continues to endure as an artistic icon, sexuality has probably remained the most problematic aspect of Rockwell's art. Fortunately, Mr. Halpern sensitively explores the various sexual themes that are infused within Rockwell's work in a mature, nuanced, and provocative manner. Mr. Halpern lauds 'Rosie the Riveter' (1943) as a progressive, Michelango-like pean to female empowerment that we learn might also represent a peculiar inversion of Rockwell's own slight sense of masculinity. In the tradition of the Old Masters, Mr. Halpern contends that Rockwell used girl's dolls to represent cupid figures, often posing these dolls to suggest female libido in such popular images as 'Girl at Mirror' (1954) and 'Tired Salesgirl on Christmas Eve' (1947). In these and many other images, Mr. Halpern sheds light on the sexuality that has been in plain view to us but has mostly been disavowed by the culturally conservative audiences who tend to appreciate Rockwell the most and, Mr. Halpern speculates, in some instances perhaps even by the artist himself during the unconscious act of creation.Mr. Halpern also helps us understand how some of Rockwell's images can be more fully appreciated through greater awareness of the artist's life, American culture, and subtle details contained within specific paintings. To cite just one of dozens of illuminating excursuses offered by Mr. Halpern: In 'Before the Shot' (1958), Rockwell brilliantly skewers the American public's paranoic obsession with pedophilia by carefully placing Freudian visual clues into what would otherwise appear to be an unremarkable scene of stolid, middle class professionalism. The image is made all the more compelling by Mr. Halpern's discussion of Rockwell's practice of working with child models in real life, where perhaps one too many encounters with suspicious, worrisome parents may have prompted the artist to exact a small amount of revenge by playing on their darkest fears. Yet, Mr. Halpern believes that the Catholic Church's recent pedophile priest scandal may have cast the final irony on Rockwell, inasmuch as the painting suggests that authority figures could have the potential to violate the trust of others entrusted to their care.Mr. Halpern goes on to discuss many other aspects of Rockwell's life and legacy, including Rockwell's struggle for artistic recognition in his lifetime, a few of the contemporary artists who have been inspired by Rockwell, and the ongoing reappraisal of Rockwell's art (of which this book should certainly be included). On the whole, this thoroughly engaging and original book is highly recommended for anyone interested in Rockwell, 20th Century art, or American culture.
