WaPo Art Critic Slams Norman Rockwell as Lacking 'Courage'

NewsBusters ^ | July 5, 2010 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

Artist Norman Rockwell's thought crime seems to be that he wasn't a kneejerk liberal. And for that, he has earned an angry leftwing rant from Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik who claimed that Rockwell lacked "courage" for not glorifying leftwing causes. Rockwell's "Four Freedoms" series? It disgusts Gopnik because it "doesn't invoke a communist printing his pamphlets or an atheist on a soapbox." So if Gopnik can't stand the popular Norman Rockwell, just what kind of art does he like? You can find out below the fold but a warning: please be sure you are not consuming liquids while viewing an example of Gopnik art or you risk spewing it over your computer monitor when you burst out laughing.

However, before we take a look at Gopniks laughable taste in art, let us join him in mid-rant as he tells us how much he absolutely hates Norman Rockwell:

Norman Rockwell is often championed as the great painter of American virtues. Yet the one virtue most nearly absent from his work is courage. He doesn't challenge any of us, or himself, to think new thoughts or try new acts or look with fresh eyes. From the docile realism of his style to the received ideas of his subjects, Rockwell reliably keeps us right in the middle of our comfort zone.

[Rebelbase]

Norman Rockwell’s art was no diverse enough. Down is up, white is black. Independence day is to celebrate civil rights, gay rights, animal rights, women’s rights, moonbat rights.

[J Edgar]

Does anyone doubt that Communist feel they have been given the “Green Light” by both American governmental and corporate powers?

[windcliff]

I would love one of those at work.

[cripplecreek]

If your hometown’s Independance day parade primarily consists of tractors.....

...You just might live in Rockwell’s America.

[hellbender]

Yes. I have lived in places where (as late as the 1980s) no one bothered to lock their doors. I grew up in a suburban community where I never knew of anyone suffering burglary, where heroin or even marijuana abuse was unknown. We rode our bikes all over, never fearing danger. Black kids in my school were our friends and companions. But the Left wants us to regard the Eisenhower years as ones of repression and injustice.

[thecodont]

http://www.best-norman-rockwell-art.com/four-freedoms.html

Norman Rockwell was inspired to paint The Four Freedoms series by Franklin Roosevelt's speech of the same name.

Rockwell, knowing he was too old to serve in the military, sought to do something to help his country during World War II. He came up with the idea of illustrating Roosevelt's speech.

He labored on these paintings for 6 months in 1942. He lost 15 pounds and many nights sleep. When he was finished, he had created some of the greatest masterpieces of his entire career.

After seeking unsuccessfully to find a United States government wartime agency to sponsor these works, he turned to his old friends, The Saturday Evening Post and Curtis Publishing.

Published by the Saturday Evening Post

The first Freedom painting published was Freedom of Speech, which appeared in the February 20, 1943. The Series continued with Freedom to Worship (February 27), Freedom from Want (March 6) and concluded with Freedom from Fear on March 13, 1943.

In addition to publishing the paintings, Curtis Publishing commissioned essays to accompany the paintings in print. Each accompanying article expounded on the thoughts provoked by Rockwell's imagery.

The editors of The Post did a masterful job of finding the right author for each essay. All four author added to the message the paintings conveyed.

Freedom of Speech

Freedom to Worship

Freedom from Want

Freedom from Fear

[RightOnline]

OK, so I followed the link and still find myself wondering why on earth I’d give a flyin’ s**t what this faggot thinks.

[anniegetyourgun]

Unfortunately not...just kids, patriots, biz folks, and a few pols in our little waterfront town parade. Pretty good fireworks too!

[skimask]

This is a side story. A few years ago an elderly couple lived next door to me. Very nice people. You could tell that the lady had to have been quite attractive in her younger days. She still had an elegance about her.

Over the mantle they had a Rockwell original painting. It was a painting of an elegantly dressed lady standing on the back of a pumpkin shaped horse drawn carriage kind of like the Cinderella story. Turns out it was my neighbor who posed for that painting and Mr. Rockwell gave her the original after it was published on The Saturday Evening Post. They had the painting insured for $750,000.

[mjp]

This country is about a game-changing guarantee that equal room will be made for Latino socialists, disgruntled lesbian spinsters, foul-mouthed Jewish comics and even, dare I say it, for metrosexual half-Canadian art critics with a fondness for offal, spinets and kilts.

Rockwell wasn't postmodern enough for him

[Bernard Marx]

I grew up in Norman Rockwell America. How I wish we had never left it!

Gopnik describes two kinds of Rockwell depictions of young males. He, Gopnik, fits into this category:

urban and effeminate and overcivilized, in need of a good, toughening hazing.

[anniegetyourgun]

Your instincts are always right...online.

[anniegetyourgun]

What a wonderful story!

This one is my favorite Rockwell:

Marriage License

[editor-surveyor]

I can just imagine what “new acts” this freekazoid fraggot might want us to try...
.

[AnAmericanMother]

Gopnik is an idiot who knows nothing about Rockwell. Typical liberal, opening mouth before engaging brain.

Here's a painting by Rockwell from the height of the civil rights disturbances:

"Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi)"

There's your courage. There's your challenge.

[Oztrich Boy]

That’s not bad, but I prefer those dogs playing poker.

[editor-surveyor]

A meeting of Brown Shirt traitors?

.

[editor-surveyor]

Off your meds tonight???
.

[cripplecreek]

I haven’t seen my housekey in a decade. LOL

I leave my keys in the truck pretty much all the time. During the winter I start it up then walk to the post office to let it warm up.

[editor-surveyor]

Or in short: DD up, DD down.
.