Title: Norman Rockwell : the underside of innocence /
Authors: Halpern, Richard, 1954-; Rockwell, Norman, 1894-1978.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press,
Year: 2006
Subjects: Rockwell, Norman, Criticism and interpretation.; Rockwell, Norman, Psychology.
Abstract: "Norman Rockwell's scenes of everyday small-town life are still among the most indelible images in all of twentieth-century art. While opinions of Rockwell vary from uncritical admiration to sneering contempt, those who love him and those who dismiss him do agree on one thing: his art embodies a distinctively American style of innocence." "In this book, Richard Halpern argues that this sense of innocence arises from our reluctance - and also Rockwell's - to acknowledge the often disturbing dimensions of his works. Rockwell's paintings frequently teem with perverse acts of voyeurism and desire but contrive to keep these acts invisible - or rather, hidden in plain sight, available for unacknowledged pleasure but easily denied by the viewer." "Rockwell emerges in this book, then, as a deviously brilliant artist, a remorseless diagnostician of the innocence in which we bathe ourselves, and a continuing, unexpected influence on contemporary artists. Far from a banal painter of the ordinary, Halpern argues, Rockwell is someone we have not yet dared to see for the complex creature he is: a wholesome pervert, a knowing innocent, and a kitschy genius."--BOOK JACKET.
Contents: Manufacturing innocence -- Ways of not seeing -- Phallic women, Adam's apples, and the fullness of the world -- That kind of man -- The history of girls -- Painting: a middlebrow art -- Rockwell's heirs.