Norman Rockwell is frequently called 'one of the best known' American artists of the 20th Century – the person who wrote the adverts for this
exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery is just one of the latest to say so. And part of the reason that Rockwell is so well known is that his work didn't just appear in galleries like this one, his art also graced the covers of 323 Saturday Evening Post editions, was used in many famous adverts., and on the pages of many other magazines and on book jackets. So even people not interested in art would have seen his oft. romanticised depictions of
'Mom's home made apple pie' America circa 1950.
Norman Rockwell's 'The Bid'
While some exhibitions skip over Rockwell's more accessible work, this one includes it, with examples of all six decades of his working life (the Saturday Evening Post covers are from between 1916 and 1963.). His eye was on a very changing face of America, yet it was most often an eye wearing rose coloured glasses. His was the America that a lot of people wanted it to be. A safe vision when shown in the current climate, but still a bit political in that it's, of course, simple, working class and white.
It might be that you can't see the relevance of looking at these images now, and that you're one of the many who don't see Rockwell as an artist, more of an illustrator, but even if that's the case you can still see this a a trip though history to an America that we now all know was a lie. And charming as they are, part of the charm of Rockwell's images is that they're all a little bit tongue in cheek.
