What is it about?
In this article, I argue that Rockwell's popularize illustrations remain perennially attractive as a nostalgic celebration of traditional "American" values--patriotism, hard work, thrift, honesty, cheerfulness--through its depiction of a mythic American world of unchanging racial, class and gender hierarchies. I also maintain that through its architecture and installation of Rockwell's work, the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, represents a concerted attempt to enshrine or sacralize Rockwell's work by raising it to high art status.
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Photo by Vika Chartier on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Unlike a number of prominent art critics who have celebrated the museum and Rockwell's art, this article looks at Rockwell's work critically. It doesn't disdain Rockwell's illustrations as low or popular art, as some critics have, but it takes his work seriously in an effort to comprehend the reasons for its undying popularity.
Perspectives
I published this article in 2006. Since then it has enjoyed a broad readership because of its unique critical perspective. As one reviewer of Seeing High and Low, the book in which the essay first appeared, wrote: "Wallach offers the most compelling theorization of caricature and its political stakes [of all the essays in the book]"
Wark Professor of Art and Art History Emeritus ALAN WALLACH
College of William and Mary
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Norman Rockwell Museum and the Representation of Social Conflict (2006), October 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004711754_009.
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