BENTONVILLE - “American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell,” on display at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art through May 27, is the largest touring body of the iconic artist’s original works. With 50 of Rockwell’s oil paintings and all 323 covers that he did for the Saturday Evening Post, the exhibition is a big, juicy slice of American pie.
The traveling exhibition was organized by the home of everything Rockwell, the Norman Rockwell Museum, in the artist’s adopted hometown of Stockbridge, Mass. Among the most recognizable works in the exhibition: Triple Self-Portrait (1960), Girl at Mirror (1954), Art Critic (1955), Going and Coming (1947) and the politically charged The Problem We All Live With (1964). The latter depicts a 6-year-old black girl walking to an all-white school in 1960 New Orleans escorted by four U.S. Marshals. Racial epithets are scrawled on the wall behind her and the remnants of a thrown tomato provide a sharp contrast to the girl’s white dress, socks and shoes. In April, the girl depicted in the painting, Ruby Bridges(now 58), will give a lecture to a sold-out crowd at Crystal Bridges. Its importance remains relevant, given the fact it was on display in a hallway outside the Oval Office for a time in 2011.
The exhibition now at Crystal Bridges is so popular that members and nonmembers have to reserve time slots to see it. During the first hour on a day of the exhibition’s opening weekend, patrons waited in line to get in, then disregarded staff’s instructions to stay with the flow for proposed ease of viewing. They darted around for long looks at their favorite paintings, then backtracked to see those with which they weren’t so familiar. Intermingled with Rockwell’s brilliantly detailed paintings were early sketches of what some would call more ordinary works, like the Christmas-theme pieces he produced for Hallmark Cards.
Lastly, patrons lingered over the Saturday Evening Post covers, described by the curator to be the “spine” of the exhibition. Rows upon rows of the original covers (postmarks included) depict Rockwell’s views of the everyman and woman caught in a snapshot of time - their trials, triumphs, struggles for social justice and a raw human spirit.
A third component of “American Chronicles” is a step-by-step depiction of the detailed process by which Rockwell created one particular painting, Murder in Mississippi, for Look magazine in 1965. The piece accompanied a story titled “Southern Justice” about the 1964 murders of three young civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss. Materials on display will include Rockwell’s handwritten research notes, posed photographs and preliminary sketches he used to create the painting.
The only reproductions in the exhibition were The Four Freedoms , a series Rockwell produced in 1943. The theme for the works was inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union Address, during which he identified four essential human rights: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Want and Freedom From Fear. It’s been said that the original Four Freedoms has not left the Rockwell museum in more than a decade.
Style, Pages 45 on 03/24/2013