Norman Rockwell
Subtitle: the underside of innocence
By: Richard Halpern.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 201
Subjects: Rockwell, Norman, 1894-1978 -- Criticism and interpretation; Rockwell, Norman, 1894-1978 -- Psychology
Other titles: Underside of innocence
Description: "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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Manufacturing innocence; title: Ways of not seeing; title: Phallic women, Adam's apples, and the fullness of the world; title: That kind of man; title: History of girls; title: Painting: a middlebrow art; title: Rockwell's heirs.