Acccording to Rockwell himself he would take photographs of people he
wanted to use in the proper clothes and then put them into the scene. If you
are working from photographs of entire scenes then you take the photograph
apart,figure out the perspective, and use the photograph as a reference for
detail and light. If you don't, then depending on how far away th scene is you
get compression of space and you can get lens bulge as well. In a general
way none of this is noticable consciously but it looks funny. Rockwell both
worked from photographs of scenes and by introducing photographs of figures
into scenes which is more difficult than working from scenes and he didn't
always have complete control of his space, which is not surprising
considering how fast he had to work. I found the problems irritating as I
would if
I had done it myself and I expect Rockwell did as well. Reproduction
somehow erases most of this sort of problem,probably because it is itself a
photograph. I don't think that codes of the different modes come into it.The
surprising thing is that there are no striking passages of things he was
painting directly in front of him.
On Rockwell's excellence in the "domain of advertising
illustration and populist sentimental imagery which is really no less
significant to our visual culture than a Caravaggio. " there is no doubt.
KAte Sullivan
In a message dated 10/9/10 8:22:12 PM, [email protected] writes:
> I agree with Kate's assessment even though our separate reasons for
> agreement
> don't really match up. Rockwell worked a lot from photos, set up photos,
> and
> thus the compressed space in his work is common to photography that
> represents
> objects in closer positions to each other than is possible in actual
> space.
> This compression is strengthened by the uniformity of the photographic
> edge
> around objects even though they occupy different focal positions in real
> space.
> Of course photography can imitate the different positions of things in
> real
> space but the ways the lens work tend to put diverse positions on the same
>
> plane. This is most evident when one looks at "3-D" photos. where objects
> tend
> to appear two dimensional but separated from each other spatially ---like
> a
> series of cut-outs. At any rate I won't fault Rockwell's drawing
> "accuracy"
> since we are not sure if that accuracy ought to be measured by the
> photograph or
> direct observation or some combination. Each mode has its own codes
> Furthermore, we should be skeptical of codes themselves because they imply
> a
> static set of rules or signs unaffected by context or interpretation.
