Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Thursday, December 12. 2013

Painting America


Inside America’s Great Romance With Norman Rockwell - A new biography of the artist reveals the complex inner life of our greatest and most controversial illustrator


I don't know why they bother to wonder whether he was gay or not. Sounds more shy and inhibited to me, but who cares? I didn't know that he was a New Yorker.


This is The Connoisseur (1963)






Posted by Bird Dog in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 05:10 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

BD: Are you familiar with the process of "re-eduation" that went on during Mao's regime? Destroy all religion, destroy the economic system, destroy the family, destroy icons of the former ideal, destroy . . . teach fear, deny free speech. . . etc., what don't you get about this new attack on Rockwell? Please tell me you are not so naive as to believe that it is just one more attempt to count who uses rubber duckies in the bath tub?
#1 faculty wife on 2013-12-12 10:07 (Reply)
Rockwell controversial? Only for those who hated him and all they thought he stood for, and all those middle-class and flyover people who actually LIKED his work.
#2 Sam L. on 2013-12-12 11:37 (Reply)
Not only was he gay but he was a closeted Muslim, socialist AND black. Some say he was an undocumented worker as well. Considering the new governor of New York and the current president, he should become the official progressive artist of record. Mapplethorpe, Angelou, Mandela, and the Grand Mufti are so envious.
#3 indyjonesouthere on 2013-12-12 14:02 (Reply)
The gays already have Leyendecker - isn't that enough?
#4 Ben David on 2013-12-12 14:10 (Reply)
Norman Rockwell seems to be saying, "I have the artistic capabilities to paint in an abstract style, but I choose not to." Which is what infuriated, and continues to infuriate all the modern art people.

Norman Rockwell did not march in lockstep with the intelligentsia, which infuriated them.
#5 Gringo on 2013-12-12 15:40 (Reply)
See http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/12/false-portrait-on-deborah-solomons-norman-rockwell
#6 James the lesser (Link) on 2013-12-12 16:30 (Reply)
$46 million.
The highest price ever paid for an American painting, by the most famous American illustrator to ever hold a piece of charcoal. No one cares about his "story". They care more about "seeing" a country nobody can remember anymore.
#7 Scullman on 2013-12-12 18:16 (Reply)
@Gringo:

I have the artistic capabilities to paint in the abstract style, as well as the non-objective style (which is the vomit that the connoisseur above is beating his eyes with) as well as Mr. Pollock's "action painting". These require little more than a solid understanding of color theory, a box of paints of reasonable quality and something to stick them on.

I however, have more taste and honor than to inflict such things on the world. Which is a pretty low bar really.
#8 William O. B'Livion on 2013-12-13 00:52 (Reply)
Many preadolescent children can produce a piece of abstract art which would be deemed good production by an adult, but cannot yet match adult representational art.

[I added preadolescent because I recall that a cousin in her high school years produced some pretty good representational drawings.]
#8.1 Gringo on 2013-12-13 13:39 (Reply)
He was a pedophile because he featured a lot of boys in his works? I would suggest that being a longtime illustrator for Boys Life magazine (the Boy Scouts publication) might have had something to do with his choice of subject matter.
#9 Jim on 2013-12-13 22:44 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.