{"id":4200,"date":"2010-12-13T04:57:37","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T12:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=4200"},"modified":"2021-01-15T00:20:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T08:20:04","slug":"norman-rockwells-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=4200","title":{"rendered":"Norman Rockwell's Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A confluence of events, including particularly <a href=\"http:\/\/grantbridgestreet.blogspot.com\/2010\/12\/norman-rockwell.html\">a recent entry at Grantbridge Street<\/a>, brought me to a new re&auml;lization about Norman Rockwell's great masterpiece, <div style=\"text-align: center ;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/0.tqn.com\/d\/arthistory\/1\/0\/_\/q\/aonr_dia_09_20.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/rockwell_southernjustice_450x571.jpg\" alt=\"[image of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, being murdered]\" width=\"450\" height=\"571\" style=\"border: 0 ; display: block ; margin-top: 1em ; margin-bottom: 1em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; max-width: 100% ; max-height: 127vw ;\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/0.tqn.com\/d\/arthistory\/1\/0\/_\/q\/aonr_dia_09_20.jpg\"><cite>Southern Justice<\/cite><\/a><\/div><\/p> <p>The point has been thoroughly belabored that Rockwell's recurring theme was a vision of America.  I want to draw attention to the specific that this vision of <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">America<\/span> isn't much of amber waves of grain or of redwoods; it is of <em>people<\/em>; his recurring theme was <em>Americans<\/em> &mdash; a sort of <em>people<\/em> &mdash; as he saw <em>them<\/em>.  In image after image, Rockwell painted Americans. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/rockwell_riveter_450x581.jpg\" alt=\"[image of burly female riveter]\" width=\"450\" height=\"581\" style=\"border: 0 ; display: block ; margin-top: 1em ; margin-bottom: .5em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; max-width: 100% ; max-height: 129.1vw ;\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/rockwell_homecoming_450x586.jpg\" alt=\"[image of returning soldier being greeted in tenement neighborhood]\" width=\"450\" height=\"586\" style=\"border: 0 ; display: block ; margin-top: .5em ; margin-bottom: 1em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; max-width: 100% ; max-height: 130.2vw ;\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/rockwell_runaway_450x512.jpg\" alt=\"[image of police officer, small boy with bindle, and short-order cook at counter]\" width=\"450\" height=\"512\" style=\"border: 0 ; display: block ; margin-top: .5em ; margin-bottom: 1em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; max-width: 100% ; max-height: 113.8vw ;\" \/> It would be a mistake to say that these were Americans as Rockwell <em>wished<\/em> them to be.  Rather, these are people as Rockwell <em>conceptualized<\/em> Americans.  He does not generally make them <em>pretty<\/em>; they are apt to have craggy or slightly comical faces, to be noticeably scrawny or chubby rather than athletic in appearance.  But there is an underlying <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">idealization<\/span> here.  It is not one of <em>place<\/em>; to be an American is neither to be within nor to be from a <em>region<\/em>; the concept of <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">American<\/span> here is more akin to one of <em>culture<\/em>, but there's a better term for what it really is.<\/p> <p>With his having made all of these images of Americans, to be painted by Rockwell was to be depicted <em>as<\/em> an American.  When Rockwell painted Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, he painted three <em>Americans<\/em>. <a href=\"http:\/\/0.tqn.com\/d\/arthistory\/1\/0\/_\/q\/aonr_dia_09_20.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/rockwell_southernjustice_450x571.jpg\" alt=\"[image of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, being murdered]\" width=\"450\" height=\"571\" style=\"border: 0 ; display: block ; margin-top: 1em ; margin-bottom: 1em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; max-width: 100% ; max-height: 127vw ;\" \/><\/a> Indeed, for Rockwell, these three must have been <em>very<\/em> American, because here <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">to be an American<\/span> is to embrace an <em>ethos<\/em>.  <em>Americanism<\/em> is an <em>ethos<\/em>.<\/p> <p>The viewer sees only the shadows of the killers.  It could be argued that Rockwell didn't know how the killers looked, but he could have dressed them in white sheets.  It could be noted that they seem more menacing in this way, and perhaps Rockwell wanted that effect.  But the main reason that they are out-of-frame is because <em>Rockwell painted Americans<\/em>. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/rockwell_sj_division.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"286\" style=\"border: 0 ; display: block ; margin-top: 1em ; margin-bottom: 1em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ; max-width: 100% ; max-height: 63.6vw ;\" \/><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A confluence of events, including particularly a recent entry at Grantbridge Street, brought me to a new re&auml;lization about Norman Rockwell's great masterpiece, Southern Justice The point has been thoroughly belabored that Rockwell's recurring theme was a vision of America. I want to draw attention to the specific that this vision of America isn't much [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[164,6,9,4],"tags":[924,1360,923,925,922,921],"class_list":["post-4200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-commentary","category-ideology-philosophy","category-public","tag-andrew-goodman","tag-ethoi","tag-james-chaney","tag-michael-schwerner","tag-norman-rockwell","tag-rockwell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4200"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11626,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4200\/revisions\/11626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}