Norman Rockwell, American Artist

Since it's Constitution Day, or was when I started on this post, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look at a very American artist, Norman Rockwell.

While I was going through college, I learned that Norman Rockwell wasn't much of an artist. He couldn't be. Much of his work was cover art for the "Saturday Evening Post," and so created his pictures to fit a narrow range of conditions. Each had to

• Fit the shape of the Post cover
• Leave room for the magazine's title and other cover information
• Conform to a list of subjects determined by the magazine publisher

Obviously, this couldn't be real art. Real art was the gushing forth of the artist's deepest personal feelings and desires, in whatever the artist wanted to use as a medium.

(Many people who believed that also believed that haiku was real art. How, I don't know.)

Besides, common people liked Rockwell's art. And they still do. No serious artist, of course, could possibly be appreciated by the hoi polloi. And certainly wouldn't be appreciated enough for some of the masses to buy copies of his work.

Commercial Rockwell art sites and pages:

• "Best Norman Rockwell Art / Norman Rockwell Art Collectors: Here's Your First Stop."
• "Norman Rockwell Collector Plates"
• "Norman Rockwell Art Prints"

(I haven't checked these out, and so can't vouch for their bona fides.)

Later in his career, Norman Rockwell chose poverty and racism and integration as subjects for his paintings, and was recognized as a serious painter.

There are some decent collections of information about Rockwell online:

• "Norman Rockwell Biography" (Associated Content: the People's Media Company)
• "Norman Rockwell Museum"
• and of course, Wikipedia's "Norman Rockwell" entry