POWER OF NORMAN ROCKWELL
DAM’S Norman Rockwell retrospective puts him at the center of progressive, 20th-century thinking
Norman Rockwell is famous for his portrayals of American life. A new exhibit at the Denver Art Museum shows him as a progressive thinker and reveals the way pieces such as “The Problem We All Live With” and “The Right to Know” could change minds.
“N orman Rockwell: Imagining Freedom” tells the story of a painter who mastered the persuasive powers of art and deployed them as a force for good.
That’s an oversimplification of the justopened exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, and certainly a reduction of Rockwell’s impact on 20th century pop culture. But the sprawling show develops a tight narrative around that idea and sticks with it, centering its offerings on Rockwell’s phenomenally popular “Four Freedoms” paintings and following that up, exhaustively, with his later images propagating civil rights, human rights and global equity.
The argument is convincing and the lesson, told through hundreds of paintings, posters and other objects by Rockwell and his peers, is
compelling. There’s much to like in “Imagining Freedom.”
Part of that comes from Rockwell’s signature sentimentality, his ability to draw up characters a viewer can’t help but love, and see their own community manifested in — the plucky kids, mischievous dogs and earnest laborers that appeared most famously on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post from 1916 to 1963. There were more than 300 covers at a time when the magazine’s circulation topped 4 million, and they made Rockwell a star.
They also came to threaten his legacy as an artist. For decades, Rockwell was written off as a clever illustrator, beloved but lightweight.
More recently, and especially since his death in 1978 at the age of 84, there’s been a redefinition of his stature, driven by respected critics who have noted both his painterly abilities, rooted in a lush, romantic realism, and the rich content of his depictions of Americana. At one point, Rockwell was destined to be an art history footnote; now he’s a fixture in top-tier museums. This current exhibit arrives in Denver after stops at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the George Washington University Museum and other established institutions.
The show was organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., which holds a large stock of Rockwell’s work and archival materials and has made it a mission to expand his legacy. This is not an exhibition assembled by an objective curatorial voice, rather it is put forth by a team that is paid to promote Rockwell’s reputation.
That doesn’t mean the show lacks authenticity. It makes sound arguments, but it is necessary context. And for this exhibit, context is everything.
“Imagining Freedom,” organized locally by DAM’S Timothy Standring, is rare in that it mixes a lot of history with a lot of art and, at times, feels more like history museum fare; there’s a surplus of text and a good deal of related material not created by Rockwell. That might be jarring for DAM regulars, but everything syncs up nicely and necessarily.
It’s crucial to know that President Franklin Roosevelt had been struggling, early in World War II, to build U.S. support for a military conflict that many Americans considered a European problem. Roosevelt’s efforts to stir up enthusiasm had fallen short, including a propaganda campaign, based around “four essential freedoms” that formed his argument for war. Artists stepped in to magnify the message, among them Rockwell who used them as inspiration for four 1943 oil paintings: “Freedom of Speech,” depicting a lone dissenter speaking his mind at a town council meeting; “Freedom of Worship,” showing an array of believers praying side by side in a house of worship; “Freedom from Want,” with a multigenerational family sitting down to a bountiful feast; and “Freedom from Fear,” with a young couple tucking their children comfortably into bed.
The paintings stunned the masses. Ten of thousands of reprints were distributed and the quartet served as visuals for the effort to sell war bonds. They drew large crowds and enormous investments on a tour across the U.S. (stopping in Denver on May 1, 1944). They inspired an outpouring of artistic expression, including a symphony written by composer Robert Russell Bennett, which plays in the background of the current museum show.
The level to which Rockwell’s paintings inspired families to send their boys off to war is arguable — Pearl Harbor, insignificantly mentioned here, had something to do with it — but Rockwell’s work was a powerful force. Not just at the outset, but through the duration, as Rockwell continued to make imagery that documented the struggle of a nation at war.
This body of work is his best and the exhibit contains a welledited sampling. That includes a section of images of women entering the labor force as the men disappeared, and his series based around the fictional character of Private Willie Gillis, a hapless young man yanked from innocence onto the front lines.
There are moments of political brilliance in this part of the exhibit, including “Armchair General,” which depicts a father of three active soldiers monitoring radio reports of the military
and “War News,” which has four men huddled similarly around a radio in a dingy diner somewhere in America. The settings are absurdly normal — cats dangle at the father’s feet, the diner’s floor is covered in grime — but the tension is palpable.
Here, Rockwell turned his sentimental brush into a rich documentation of the moment, full of nuance and tragedy. The most convincing work in the show is 1945’s “Back to Civvies,” which depicts an Air Force pilot after his return home from battle, trying on his old suit; the arms and legs are too short. The scene is absurdly cute.
But, at the same time, melancholy. Rockwell was keenly aware that the country was fueling its war with men who were just a smidge beyond childhood. He found oddly adorable ways to remind the country of their terrible, bloody sacrifice.
With the impact of the “Four Freedoms” clear, Rockwell came to understand the ability of his work to manipulate opinion, and as the exhibit goes on to demonstrate, turned it toward other worthy causes.
The show concludes with a series of conscious paintings Rockwell made in the 1960s that take progressive stands.
Chief among them is 1963’s “The Problem We All Live With,” which illustrated a story in Look magazine about school desegregation in the South. Based on an actual event, Rockwell portrays Ruby Bridges, a Black, 6-year-old child, being escorted to school by U.S. Marcampaign, shals.
Once again, the subject matter is irresistible — Bridges is a tiny girl in pigtails and ankle socks — but the situation is deadly serious as she makes her way into an all-white school.
Rockwell draws us in with sweetness, then stuns us with excruciating reality.
No doubt, he can veer into saccharine territory.
There are poignant paintings, such as 1968’s “The Right to Know,” depicting a multicultural assemblage of citizens staring down an empty chair that is meant to represent the power of government. The painting is an indictment of an administration that was withholding information on the Vietnam War from the public.
But there’s also 1966’s “JFK’S Legacy: The Peace Corps,” with an overly idolized president surrounded by an overly idealized selection of his followers; and 1961’s Saturday Evening Post illustration “Golden Rule,” which was later turned into a mosaic for the United Nations building.
The painting depicts a sea of humanity — representing people of various ethnicities and religious beliefs — all gathered around the text “Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You.” The piece is well-intended, though, looking at it through a 2020 lens, full of racial tropes.
At the time, Rockwell’s efforts on behalf of human rights helped change his reputation and placed an illustrator who was, by then, considered oldfashioned back into the urgent discussions of the day.
They help this exhibition, too, which arrives in the middle of Black Lives Matter, a movement that has, once again, forced hard conversations about race and class into the mainstream.
It’s easy to push Rockwell into the category of “dead white guys” whose privilege allowed them to succeed in the worlds of art and commerce and whose present-day relevance is fairly called into question.
“Imagining Freedom” asks viewers to resist that urge. It’s solid enough that many will.