Getting Real About the Art, Politics of Norman Rockwell

Although I appreciated the article by Suzanne Muchnic on the rehabilitation of Norman Rockwell’s reputation as a serious artist (“Rockwell Posts Some Gains With Critics,” Oct. 28), I regret to say I find myself horrified at the prospect.

Rockwell’s work is a whitewashing of American life in more than one sense of the word, never hinting at the presence of racial conflict or economic inequality in the United States.

One of the pictures reproduced with the article, “Freedom of Speech,” almost perfectly reveals how profoundly reactionary, artistically and ideologically, Rockwell’s “art” was. The work evidently depicts a worker being allowed to speak his piece at a town meeting, as a white patriarch regards him with approval. But nothing in “Freedom of Speech” remotely hints at the often heated give-and-take of serious political debate, where diametrically opposed points of view come into conflict with one another.

It is ironic that this picture dates from 1943, although no one could miss its propagandistic overtones. But “Freedom of Speech” represents precisely the kind of art that was best appreciated in Berlin or Moscow in that year, the kind of suffocatingly “realistic” art promoted by oppressive totalitarian regimes.

DAVE CLAYTON

San Diego

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I am glad to see Norman Rockwell getting a great deal of positive attention by the American art establishment. I have admired his vast illustrative skills most of my life.

His current acceptance by the high priests of the museum/art critic cabal, however, reveals much more about the changing nature of the American art museum than about Norman Rockwell. His work never in any way addressed the key paradigm shift that created the entire 20th century canon as best represented by Cubism and its offshoots. He is just as conceptually inconsequential as ever. His current deification illustrates the shift of the art museum from the role of ecclesiastical cop at the door of the high church of modernism to that of the handmaiden of global capitalism.

JIM BLAKE

Palo Alto

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As a lifelong admirer of Norman Rockwell’s work but not a follower of the art scene, I was dumbfounded by the professional art critics’ opinions quoted in Suzanne Muchnic’s feature. I had no idea one of my favorite artists was the subject of such caustic dismissal.

And while I was relieved to read that the prevailing negative viewpoint toward Rockwell’s body of work appears to be waning, I couldn’t help but note the mention in the article of the number of museums that said no to hosting the show. And that left me curious as to whether any museums in our fair city declined the opportunity, as well as disappointed that Muchnic did not investigate the point. Because if L.A. venues did refuse, know this: Critics and dissenting institutions be damned. If I have to, I will walk to the San Diego Museum of Art in order to have the exhilarating experience of coming face to paint with this great American’s artistic brilliance.

WILL CAMPBELL

Encino