How Cold War Politics Sabotaged Norman Rockwell’s Art
An exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum tracking the drop and
resurgence in popularity of narrative art raises much bigger questions
than it set out to address.
Left:
Martha Holmes (1923–2006), “Jackson Pollock Works in His Long Island
Studio” (1949), photograph for ‘LIFE’ magazine; right: Louie Lamone
(1918–2007), reference photo for “The Connoisseur”; both on view in Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World at the Norman Rockwell Museum (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)
STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — Norman Rockwell kneels over a canvas slinging
paint in every direction. Dressed in slacks and a button-up shirt, the
artist famous for depicting Hometown, USA, is now trying his hand at
Abstract Expressionism. He’s painting “The Connoisseur” (1961), a
rebuttal to the newer American art he understood to be replacing his.
“If I were young,” he admitted, “I would paint that way myself.” Willem
de Kooning admired the illustrator’s dip into abstraction, once
commenting: “Square inch by square inch, it’s better than a Jackson!”
But it didn’t alter Rockwell’s course. “My ability evidently lies in
telling stories,” he said, “and modern art doesn’t go in much for that
sort of thing.” Norman Rockwell, “The Connoisseur” (1961), oil on canvas, cover for The Saturday Evening Post, private collection
This statement is offered and taken at face value in Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World,
the current exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum. “The Connoisseur”
serves as both introduction and centerpiece for the show,
which “examine[s] the forces that forged the mid-century dismissal of
narrative and illustration, as well as the resurgence of realist
painting during the latter half of the twentieth century.” Chief Curator
Stephanie Haboush Plunkett brought together pieces by over 50 artists,
nearly all male. Works by deceased artists — Pollock, Helen
Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, etc.
— are mostly on paper. An exception is also the best; Alice Neel’s
canvas “John and Joey Priestly” (1968) hangs on its own wall at the end
of the show, rightly, as a singular work.
The ambition of Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World is
inversely related to its clarity. Why, for example, is Andrew Wyeth put
in the “Pop and Photorealism” section? The success of his work predates
these genres and Abstract Expressionism itself. Why does the show
conclude with Neel’s “realist” piece, which is dated 20 years before a
Robert Motherwell abstraction, “Nocturne 1” (1988), hanging in the first
room? Curatorial confusion becomes the exhibition’s most compelling
feature. But what did happen to Norman Rockwell’s influence as an
illustrator of American life? Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World installation view
The artist was correct that his abilities lie in telling stories; but
he was mistaken that US modern art doesn’t “go in” for storytelling.
Rockwell (1894–1978) moved to Vermont and started painting small-town
American life in 1939, the year World War II broke. It was also the year
Clement Greenberg (briefly mentioned in the show) published “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” an essay defining the role of “advanced” art in terms of economic class and politics. In it, he likened Rockwell and his Saturday Evening Post covers to Russian realist Ilya Repin
as a maker of images easily consumed by “peasants” who haven’t the time
nor capacity for “reflective” pleasures provided by Pablo Picasso, a
less readable artist. In contrast to “kitsch,” Greenberg espoused a new
art, with a new story, one above crass consumption and politics.
Rockwell’s narrative art of national pride and Middle American
wholesomeness became likened — by intellectual progressives — to Russian
realism and, by extension, the state-regulated production of
propaganda. Greenberg’s new art stood in perfect contrast to images
depicting loyal Soviet subjects; it was an art stripped of all imagery
and social obligations. As Rockwell and his audiences saw their America
in pictures such as “Freedom of Speech,” from 1943, the American avant-garde was attacking the possibility of “pictures” themselves. Robert Motherwell, “Nocturne 1” (1988), lithograph, courtesy Jane Eckert Fine Art
In 1943, Mark Rothko and Adolf Gottlieb wrote in the New York Times of
their intent to “insult” those attuned to “pictures for the home;
pictures for over the mantle; pictures of the American scene; social
pictures.” De Kooning was always more open-minded: “Whatever an artist’s
personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the
canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical.” Thus, personal
expression free of outside conformities became a necessary condition for
true art. Even dissent was vital. As Rockwell put it, “A fine arts
painter has to satisfy only himself … the illustrator must satisfy his
client as well as himself.” This form of freedom, to be an autonomous
agent acting without restraints, was America’s new artistic character.
Artwork of this sort became a protagonist in a larger story told by more
powerful forces than Greenberg. Jasper Johns, “Untitled (Flag and Vase)” (2000), linoleum cut, collection of Lynn Kearcher and Carl Chaiet
The CIA and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) were allies promoting Abstract Expressionism in Europe. As Eva Cockcroft argued in her Artforum article “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War” (June
1974), the success of Abstract Expressionism was essential for Cold War
propaganda. The aim was not only to make the US, and New York City in
particular, the world’s leading cultural center (rather than Paris); it
was to attract foreign intellectuals to “American” freedom, in contrast
to the culture of a controlling communist bloc. Rockwell’s audience was
populist and American. The audience for Abstract Expressionism, as
co-opted for covert messaging, was a foreign elite tempted by communist
philosophies.
Exhibition programming was the primary method of attack, exporting
the art of Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, et al. overseas. In 1954, for
example, MoMA bought the US pavilion in Venice,
determining through successive Venice Biennales what American art “is”
to the world. (It was the first time in the Biennale’s history that a
national pavilion was not run by a national government.) MoMA distances itself from allegations of conspiracy, but does not forcefully reject them either. Frances Stonor Saunders’s 1995 piece “Modern art was a CIA ‘weapon’” in the Independent recounts
the story, focusing on the CIA and quoting former CIA operative Thomas
Braden as boasting: “Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I’d love to be
able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New
York and downtown SoHo tomorrow!” Bo Bartlett, “The Box” (2002), oil on canvas, collection of Andrew NelsonNorman Rockwell in an Abstract World is a sampler of
post-war US art, rather than an expositor. The “resurgence of realist
painting” it posits is unconvincing when considering that
representational art after Abstract Expressionism largely lacks explicit
narrative, even in the work of Rockwell’s inheritors such as Bo Bartlett, who is self-consciously surreal. The work of illustrator Marshall Arisman,
who dominates the exhibition’s last room with about 10 pieces,
is “conceptual rather than narrative,” according to wall text. Finally,
the decline of Rockwell’s popularity cannot be blamed solely
on “his predilection for visual storytelling,” as the curator suggests.
It was, instead, the content of his stories. Covers of The New Yorkerhave narrated life
for over 90 years; but they depict the lives urban elites, the
“connoisseurs” themselves. It was Rockwell’s people who got eclipsed.
The Norman Rockwell Museum’s exhibition is one to ponder. It is far
more curious and provocative than it intended to be; or, as critic and
“realist” painter Fairfield Porter wrote of MoMA’s exhibition New Images of Man in 1959, it “is forced, and therefore interesting.” Robert
Rauschenberg, “Soviet/American Array III” (1990), intaglio, collection
of Universal Limited Art Editions. From the wall text: ” In 1989,
Rauschenberg became the first American artist since World War II to be
given a solo exhibition in the Soviet Union. ‘Soviet/American Array’ was
a screenprint series created specifically for his Moscow installation.
The following year, Russia invited him to exhibit in the Soviet pavilion
at the Venice Biennial, making him the first artist to represent a
country other than his own in that venue.”Norman
Rockwell, “Study for Connoisseur, The Saturday Evening Post, January
13, 1962,” oil on canvas, Norman Rockwell Museum Collection. From the
wall text: “The borrowing of Jackson Pollock’s style acknowledges a
world that Norman Rockwell would never enter. After completing
‘Connoisseur,’ Rockwell submitted a section of one of his studies to an
exhibition at the Cooperstown Art Association in New York, signing the
canvas with an Italian signature. It took first prize for painting, and
another section of the abstract study, signed under his middle name
Percival, won honorable mention at an exhibition at the Berkshire
Museum.”Alice Neel, “John and Joey Priestly” (1968), oil on canvas, courtesy Sheldon Museum of ArtRockwell and Realism in an Abstract World continues at the Norman Rockwell Museum (9 Route 183, Stockbridge, Massachusetts) through October 29.
Rob Colvin
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