Siempre ha habido cierta polémica acerca de si Norman Rockwell era un gran artista o "solo" un ilustrador.
En mi humilde opinión, aquel que con tanta facilidad consigue hacerte sentir ternura y añoranza, que te hace evocar de manera inmediata escenas de tu propio pasado, y que pone inevitablemente una sonrisa en tus labios o una lagrima en tus ojos, es indudablemente un gran maestro.
Incluyo una muestra necesariamente pequeña de su inmensa producción (alrededor de 4.000 ilustraciones) en la que se tratan diversos temas: la familia, la niñez, el amor, la fantasía... todos ellos desde un enfoque cotidiano, muy de "andar por casa", por ello nos resultan tan evocadores. Una caracteristica importante es el humor, que se manifiesta en todas sus obras de manera sencilla y muy accesible, impregnando incluso sus trabajos más serios.
De estos últimos quiero destacar "The Problem We All Live With" terminado en 1963.
Esta obra está inspirada en el día en que entro en vigor la integración escolar para blancos y negros en Nueva Orleans. Ese día, 14 de Noviembre de 1960, la pequeña Ruby Bridges, de 6 años de edad y protagonista del cuadro, acudió escoltada a su colegio entre insultos, abucheos y agresiones de todo tipo.
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| The Problem We All Live With - Norman Rockwell - 1963 |
"She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we're all very proud of her."
...recordaría mas tarde uno de los "marshalls" que la acompañaba
Adjunto un video de Ruby en la actualidad, entrevistada con ocasión de la cesión en préstamo de la obra a la Casa Blanca para su exhibición por expresa petición del Presidente Obama:
Veamos algunas obras de Rockwell, acompañadas de comentarios hechos por el mismo artista, o dedicados a él:
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| Soda Jerk - Norman Rockwell - 1953 |
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| Freedom from Want - Norman Rockwell - 1943 |
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| Girl with a Black Eye - Norman Rockwell - 1953 |
"Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative."
“I unconsciously decided that, even if it wasn’t an ideal world, it should be and so painted only the ideal aspects of it—pictures in which there are no drunken slatterns or self-centered mothers … only foxy grandpas who played baseball with the kids and boys who fished from logs and got up circuses in the backyard.”
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| After the Prom - Norman Rockwell - 1957 |
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| The Art Critic - Norman Rockwell - 1955 |
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| Little Boy Writing a Letter - Norman Rockwell - 1920 |
"If there was sadness in this creative world of mine, it was a pleasant sadness. If there were problems, they were humorous problems."
“I cannot convince myself that a painting is good unless it is popular. If the public dislikes one of my Post covers, I can’t help disliking it myself.”
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| Teacher's Birthday - Norman Rockwell - 1956 |
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| Football Hero - Norman Rockwell - 1955 |
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| And the Symbol of Welcome is Light - Norman Rockwell - 1920 |
"The view of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be."
"I learned to draw everything except glamorous women. No matter how much I tried to make them look sexy, they always ended up looking silly ... or like somebody's mother."
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| The Connoisseur - Norman Rockwell - 1962 |
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| The Homecoming G.I. - Norman Rockwell - 1945 |
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| Boy and Girl gazing at the Moon - Norman Rockwell - 1926 |
“If a picture wasn't going very well, I'd put a puppy in it.”
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| The Runaway - Norman Rockwell - 1958 |
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| Daydreaming Bookeeper - Norman Rockwell - 1924 |
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| Family Home from Vacation - Norman Rockwell - 1930 |
"Even the most brittle cynics melt in the presence of all that wholesomeness. They drop the Armani shield, and they rediscover that this is part of our culture."
Robert A. M. Stern
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| Girl at Mirror - Norman Rockwell - 1954 |
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| Before and After - Norman Rockwell - 1958 |
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| Oh Boy, its Pop with a New Plymouth - Norman Rockwell - 1951 |
"Rockwell taught me how to remember. I clung to the ordinary eccentricity, the clothes, the good-heartedness, the names of things, the comic incongruities, and the oddities of arrangement and light"
Dave Hickey
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| April Fool Girl with Shopkeeper - Norman Rockwell - 1948 |
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| Man Charting War Maneuvers - Norman Rockwell - 1944 |
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| Self Portrait - Norman Rockwell - 1960 |
“People like to think that Rockwell painted Middle America. The truth is, Norman Rockwell invented Middle America."
Tom Sgouros
"Rockwell's art mirrors our world - or at least an ideal, slightly lost version of that world . . . . Mom and apple pie are very good institutions, and so was Rockwell's America - despite the presumed shortcomings of its seeming simplifications. Rockwell was really a very fine artist. He captured in ways no one else has how America was, and how a large part of it wants to be."
Robert A. M. Stern.
