Best of Norman Rockwell
by Tom Rockwell
from Running Press
Norman Rockwell was nearly as prolific an artist as he was gifted. In addition to his many paintings, he created over 500 magazine covers and thousands of commercial illustrations. In this volume, one of Rockwell's sons has carefully reviewed his father's vast collection of work and chosen his favorite representations from each decade. Many of the pieces come from the family's private collection and are published here for the first time; however, some perennial favorites, such as Triple Self Portrait, After the Prom, and Girl at the Mirror, are also included. Many of the images have been reproduced directly from the originals so details such as brushstrokes and the texture of the canvas are visible. The Best of Norman Rockwell will please readers any time of year, but there are quite a few Thanksgiving and Christmas pictures that make this a great book to have around during the holidays.
Norman Rockwell's Christmas Book
by Molly Rockwell
from Harry N. Abrams
Stories, poems, carols, and recollections of Christmas by world-famous authors, with 120 illustrations by Norman Rockwell.
Norman Rockwell's Faith of America
by Fred Bauer
from Artabras Publishers
There is no mistaking a Norman Rockwell painting. His knack for capturing honest folk in the nostalgic light of a simpler America made him one of the most beloved artists of his time, creating instant recognition for his popular illustrations. Some might scoff at the now long-faded idealism that informed his canvases, but for many Americans Rockwell's work has come to symbolize the heart and soul of a more sympathetic society, one free from the condescending sneer of cynicism. Fred Bauer, author of this well-researched and extensive collection is definitely one of the deceased painter's most informed and ardent champions. Included here are the pieces he believes represent the, "more inspirational illustrations, the ones that lifted spirits and filled doubting hearts with hope and faith." Accordingly, he groups them in chapters addressing specific types of faith, such as the kind found in loved ones, traditions, country, etc., and Bauer's text offers much more than simple description. He takes us on a journey to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Rockwell's immortalized home town, where he meets with the painter's widow, searches out former models, and chats up the local folks who knew Rockwell not as a maker of lasting icons, but as a friend and neighbor. With careful attention and thoughtful insight he has created a kind of written portrait that offers a level of understanding and appreciation for the artist that can only add to the enjoyment shared by Rockwell's countless admirers. --George Laney
More than one hundred heartwarming illustrations, many in full color, by the acclaimed artist offer an inspirational portrait of uniquely American towns, families, traditions, and more, all captured with Rockwell's trademark understanding of everyday human existence.
Norman Rockwell 332 Magazine Covers
by Christopher Finch
from Abbeville Press
This full-sized album of Saturday Evening Post covers captures everyday events and historic moments in American history.
Although technically Norman Rockwell was an academic painter, he had the eye of a photographer and, as he became a mature artist, he used this eye to give us a picture of America that was famliar—astonishingly so—and at the same time unique. Rockwell best expressed this vision of America in his justly famous cover illustrations for magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. 332 of these cover paintings, from beloved classics like "Marbles Champion" to lesser-known gems like "Feeding Time," are reproduced in stunning full color in this large-format volume, which is sure to be treasured by art lovers everywhere.
Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence
by Richard Halpern
from University Of Chicago Press
Norman Rockwell’s scenes of everyday small-town life are 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 sure-to-be controversial 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.
Provocative but judicious, witty but deeply informed, Norman Rockwell is a book rich in suggestive propositions and eye-opening details—one that will change forever the way we think about this American icon and his works.
Norman Rockwell's America (Abradale)
by Christopher Finch
from Harry N. Abrams
A nostalgic collection of Norman Rockwell's scenes of twentieth century American life includes all of the Saturday Evening Post covers plus paintings, drawings, and graphics from every period of the artist's career--with many foldout pages.
Norman Rockwell Address Book
by Abbeville Press
from Abbeville Press
This delightful calendar highlights Norman Rockwell's unparalleled career as America's favorite illustrator and chronicler of popular culture. Works ranging from his early career in the '20s to his later "Saturday Evening Post" masterpieces are included, accompanied by entertaining commentaries. Full-color reproductions.
Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People
by Norman Rockwell
from Harry N. Abrams
This richly illustrated book brings together 14 essays by such luminaries as former Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas Hoving and art historian Robert Rosenblum, and finally and firmly anchors Rockwell's reputation in the art-historical world. The catalog of an exhibition at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, the book's 133 color reproductions are marvelously large, clear, and true in color and offer what is probably the best introduction to Rockwell for anyone who takes his illustration seriously--or anyone who doesn't, yet. Indispensable though it may be, however, Pictures for the American People may slightly irritate lifelong Rockwell fans, especially those who grew up with the Saturday Evening Post and fell for Rockwell at a time when his nonpareil illustrations were mocked by the moderns. And experienced Rockwell lovers probably have on their shelves the huge 1970 work by Thomas S. Buechner, then director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Norman Rockwell: Artist and Illustrator, which was the first comprehensive look at this uniquely American master.
Ah, well. It's about time the art world came to its senses and began to appreciate the genius and the subtlety of a painter who looked to both Chardin and N.C. Wyeth as masters. Rockwell's great works are here: Rosie the Riveter, The Four Freedoms, After the Prom, Breaking Home Ties, The Gossips, and scores of others that celebrate (and poke the gentlest of fun at) small-town, family life. There were other illustrators of Rockwell's ilk during the '40s and '50s, his most popular decades, but as Steven Heller writes in "Rebelling Against Rockwell," "Rockwell ran one step ahead of cliché, while his acolytes lagged a mile behind." --Peggy Moorman
Accompanying the first major traveling exhibition of works by Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), this volume presents a complete reappraisal of one of America's most beloved artists. Contributors from a wide range of fields-including leading art historians, cultural critics, a renowned child psychiatrist, and a leading graphic designer-shed new light on the complexity of Rockwell's art and his place as a shaper of mass-media imagery. Stunning colorplates reproduce Rockwell's paintings in crisp detail, and the essays set them in fresh contexts, discussing such themes as Rockwell's urban scenes; the reaction by both black and white Southerners to Rockwell's historic civil rights painting The Problem We All Live With; and Rockwell's role in the development of American illustration. Above all, this important volume examines Norman Rockwell's critical place in 20th-century American culture.
Rockwell Kent: The Art of the Bookplate
by Don Roberts
from Fair Oaks Press
The 175 bookplates that Rockwell Kent designed over the span of a half century are a hidden facet of his graphic arts career. Kent stands alone among twentieth-century American artists; he was not only a prolific painter, author and illustrator, but also an adventurer and political reformer. Until now, the extent and significance of his bookplate art were largely unknown. After all, a bookplate is intended to disappear inside the cover of a book. But as Don Roberts makes so engagingly clear, each tiny work represents the passion for books that Kent shared with his clients.
What emerges in this beautiful volume is more than a chronicle of one aspect of Kent's work. It is the story of communion between artist and client, woven within the saga of Rockwell Kent's life and times. Sidebars and 173 black-and-white illustrations help illuminate the text. A foreword by Kent authority Will Ross ponders Kent's rise to unprecedented fame and his subsequent fall from favor. Appendixes include two of Kent's essays on the subject as well as a master list of his bookplates.
Norman Rockwell: A Life
by Laura Claridge
from Random House
Boy Scout campouts, backyard barbecues, Christmas trees, cheerful barbers: no artist quite converted slice-of-life realism into idealized portraits of the American dream as ably as Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), whose distinguished career art historian Laura Claridge captures just as ably in this welcome biography.
Rockwell, Claridge writes, had ambitions to be considered a great artist, but he abandoned them early on in the struggle to make a living through his abilities as an illustrator. He need not have worried about money quite as much as he did, Claridge suggests, for over his long career he produced more than 4,000 paintings and earned millions of dollars; still, as we learn, Rockwell was a complicated man, beset by all sorts of worries and more expressive on canvas than he ever was in the ordinary situations of life. His patriotic style evolved through his long engagement with the Saturday Evening Post, whose editor, George Horace Lorimer, used "as an instrument of Americanization," a means of establishing a national identity and ideals of "an American community made safe by a shared vision of right and wrong." In this and much else, Rockwell excelled, achieving early and lasting success though never earning much respect from critics and other arbiters of taste--even though, Claridge notes, Rockwell had all the requisite irony, and certainly all the necessary skills.
For the last few years, a new generation of critics has been reconsidering Rockwell's career and viewing his work more favorably. Claridge's gracefully written biography will give them still more reason to see him in a positive light. It will also afford those who already cherish his art new insight into an American master. --Gregory McNamee
Norman Rockwell’s tremendously successful, prolific career as a painter and illustrator has rendered him a twentieth-century American icon. However, the very popularity and accessibility of his idealized, nostalgic depictions of middleclass life have caused him to be considered not a serious artist but a “mere illustrator”–a disparagement only reinforced by the hundreds of memorable covers he drew for The Sunday Evening Post.
Symptomatic of critics’ neglect is the fact that Rockwell has never before been the subject of a serious critical biography. Based on private family archives and interviews and publishes to coincide with a major two-year travelling retrospective of his work, this book reveals for the first time the driven workaholic who had three complicated marriages and was a distant father —so different from the loving, all-American-dad image widely held to this day. Critically acclaimed author Laura Claridge also breaks new ground with her reappraisal of Rockwell’s art, arguing that despite his popular sentimental style, his artistry was masterful, complex, and far more manipulative than people realize.
+++
