Norman Rockwell

Fülszöveg

A CLASSIC TREASURY
To say that for approximately the last 50 years Norman Rockwell has been the best-loved of American painters is to understate the case. The sheer breadth and depth of his popularity today, 15 years after his death, still beggars comparison, and it is more than possible that history will ultimately remember this gentle, unassuming man as having been the most widely admired American artist of all time.
How do we account for such overwhelming popularity? Some critics have made much of the fact that Rockwell was a superb realist painter, noting (sometimes condescendingly) that realism is the most broadly accessible of painterly styles. But that hardly seems a satisfying explanation: realism was, after all, the dominant style of Western painting for nearly 400 years, yet it produced few artists who could claim followings as large or affectionate as Rockwell's. Other critics have sought to explain his popularity in terms of his subject matter, of his dedication to... Tovább

Fülszöveg

A CLASSIC TREASURY
To say that for approximately the last 50 years Norman Rockwell has been the best-loved of American painters is to understate the case. The sheer breadth and depth of his popularity today, 15 years after his death, still beggars comparison, and it is more than possible that history will ultimately remember this gentle, unassuming man as having been the most widely admired American artist of all time.
How do we account for such overwhelming popularity? Some critics have made much of the fact that Rockwell was a superb realist painter, noting (sometimes condescendingly) that realism is the most broadly accessible of painterly styles. But that hardly seems a satisfying explanation: realism was, after all, the dominant style of Western painting for nearly 400 years, yet it produced few artists who could claim followings as large or affectionate as Rockwell's. Other critics have sought to explain his popularity in terms of his subject matter, of his dedication to portraying humorous and/or sentimental scenes of everyday middle class life. But this kind of genre painting also has a very long and distinguished history; and it is worth remembering, as well, that Rockwell's subjects were no different from those used by virtually all the other great magazine-cover illustrators of his own day, by such hugely talented and once-popular painters as the Leyendecker brothers, John Atherton, Stevan Dohanos, John Falter and dozens of others. Yet there was-and is-still only one Rockwell.
In her perceptive introduction to this book Robin Langley Sommer not only provides us with valuable insights into Rockwell's life and work but probably comes as close to explaining the true secret of this artist's uncanny power to affect viewers as it is possible to do in words. For the rest-to experience directly the full effect of the Rockwell magic-the reader may then turn to the more-than-100 full-color reproductions of classic Rockwell paintings that form the heart of this sumptuous and memorable volume. Vissza