Yeah, Dave Hickey is the heavyweight contemporary art critic who has been championing Rockwell. Rockwell is sort of interesting if you are willing to re-contextualize his work. For example instead of going through the trouble of painting a cereal box on a table, Rockwell just pasted the real box cover on the painting. He did that sort of thing a lot, to the great delight of appropriation artists of the 80s. Of course we ought to keep in mind that Rockwell was not making (most of) his paintings for display as paintings but as illustrations to be reproduced. So, for him the final work was the reproduction as a magazine cover, etc., and whether or not the cereal box was painted or pasted on was irrelevant because in the reproduction all looked seamless. The actual painting was a prop. It remains to be seen if Rockwell's depth as a commentator on life can withstand the stew of sentimentality and banality that soaks his work. It won't do to simply discuss his complicated life or soulful struggles since there's no noticeable causal relationship between those facts (if they are facts) and the context he created for his work. The two realms of Rockwell, the man and his work, would need to have a truly integrated context to justify a reinterpretation or re-contextualization. He's still the number 1 illustrator of mid 20-century American myth, without a trace of reality beyond caricature. I think he'll remain with that status. Still impressive, but not art as such. No gravitas except in his last works where that turn looks very strained and false, cornball, more like movie stills, lacking any expressive power we identify with. wc
----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, October 7, 2010 2:36:27 PM Subject: Rockwell (upcoming tv program) http://www.booktv.org/Program/7266/Encore+Booknotes+Laura+Claridge+Norman+Rockwell+A+Life.aspx
