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Some Conditions of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms

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Some Conditions of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms MORALITY AND ASPIRATION: SOME CONDITIONS OF NORMAN ROCKWELL'S FOUR FREEDOMS Sylvio Lynch III A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2020 Committee: Rebecca Mancuso, Advisor Laura Sanchez Graduate Faculty Representative Charles Coletta Andrew Hershberger ii ABSTRACT Rebecca Mancuso, Advisor The compendium of scholarly investigation in art history woefully lacks acknowledgement of perhaps the most widely known American artist of the 20th century. Norman Rockwell created works that caused non-critics to identify with understanding their sense of American identity. Rockwell also created works that caused critics to mention him by name a chief arbiter of middlebrow repression. Rockwell’s work would later be signposted as a callback to a mythical, simpler time in America. This research considers the aforementioned, exploring Rockwell’s Four Freedoms, often recalled, reinvented and discussed as symbols of American morality and aspiration. Through a focused investigation of these four works, this research defines elements of “hyper-American” expression as a subsidiary of mid-century American kitsch. Rockwell’s expressions of Americana define the rhetoric of self-realized identity that has been copied, popularized, examined, and re-examined in many areas of popular culture. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Without doubt, Dr. Rebecca Mancuso’s guidance was immensely critical to somehow molding my ideas into cohesive scholarly statements. At a time when finding an advisor seemed almost impossible, she was there to gladly help with optimism and guidance. I must thank Dr. Andrew Hershberger, whose knowledge and enthusiasm for art history breathed new life into this work, as well as my future scholarly investigation of art. My thanks to my parents in written words will always be woefully insufficient as they have done so much for me. My parents believed in me when many others did not. My parents gave me the confidence to remember my goals, to remain focused on the fruits of my sacrifice and the rewards of a steadfast work ethic, regardless of fear or distraction. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 Freedom of Speech ..................................................................................................... 2 Freedom of Worship .................................................................................................. 3 Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear ............................................................ 4 Four Freedoms and Norman Rockwell’s Values ....................................................... 5 Modernism, Rockwell and Art History ...................................................................... 10 Cultural Criticism – Kitsch, Subculture, and Identity ............................................... 14 CHAPTER 1: FREEDOM OF SPEECH, MIGRANT MOTHER, AND THE DIVINITY OF CIVIC DUTY ……..................................................................................................... 21 Freedom of Speech and Rockwell’s Town Hall Orchestration .................................. 22 The Speaker ............................................................................................................ 27 Migrant Mother and the “Speaker”............................................................................ 30 Lincoln and the Speaker............................................................................................. 35 Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship: Dual Imagination of Citizenship ...... 35 CHAPTER 2: FREEDOM OF WORSHIP: SENTIMENT AND VULNERABILITY ....... 38 Worship: A Rough Draft ............................................................................................ 40 Freedom of Worship: Characters of Piety .................................................................. 42 The Long Shadow of Lincoln (1945) .......................................................................... 43 Rockwell’s The Golden Rule ..................................................................................... 46 JFK, Rockwell and Re-invention ............................................................................... 48 Saying Grace and Rockwell’s Opposites ................................................................... 50 v Rockwell to Kadir Nelson – So Together, the Golden Rule ...................................... 53 CHAPTER 3: FREEDOM FROM WANT: THE “ROCKWELLESQUE” POSTWAR IMAGINATION OF THE AMERICAN FAMILY ............................................................... 56 Family Circus and the “Rockwellesque” ................................................................... 59 The Standing Couple ................................................................................................. 61 The Crowd of Freedom form Want and The Gossips ................................................ 64 Dinner is Not Served .................................................................................................. 68 Freedom from Want and the Popular ......................................................................... 71 CHAPTER 4: A SMUG IDEA: FREEDOM FROM FEAR, AMERICANA AND OTHER MYTHS OF AMERICAN SECURITY................................................................................. 75 Fear and Other Constructions of Response ................................................................ 76 From Want, From Fear: Two Sides of the American Dream .................................... 81 Freedom from Fear and the American Home............................................................ 82 Future Influence of a Snapshot .................................................................................. 85 CONCLUSION: FOUR FREEDOMS AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICA ................... 89 Four Freedoms and 9/11 ............................................................................................ 92 Rockwell: The Ad Man .............................................................................................. 99 Rockwell and Four Freedoms Today ......................................................................... 101 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................. 106 APPENDIX A: FIGURES .................................................................................................... 111 1 INTRODUCTION “This is the first pictorial representation I have seen of the staunchly American values contained in the rights of free speech and free worship and our goals of freedom from fear and want.” – President Franklin Roosevelt on: Rockwell’s Four Freedoms1 Tagged as a “kitchmeister,” Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) painted playful children, domesticated animals, cute families, blue-collar Americans, and, most importantly to his career, accessible Americans.2 The gatekeepers of academia and the critics of the art world vehemently resisted the value of Rockwell’s paintings during his career because of his work’s mass popularity. Of Rockwell, critic Arthur Danto said that “his success was his failure.”3 Rockwell’s work spanned seven decades of the 20th century and has been reproduced in popular memorabilia; in posters, calendars, puzzles, plates and other incarnations of commercial access. Many of his well-known paintings have become templates of communication—a language of signifiers used to essentialize, sentimentalize, question, or mock American identity. While Rockwell painted some of the most iconic works of the twentieth century, these works would not gain their initial cultural prominence through the discerning eye of the avant- garde. Instead, Rockwell’s work became a ubiquitous force of mass media and it would leave an indelible imprint within the American public. According to critic, Richard Halpern, the Rockwell brand still accounts for at least $20 million per year.4 At the time of his death in 1978, Rockwell was an artist whose work Americans of every demographic had seen, although, as art 1 James McCabe and Stuart Murray. Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms: Images That Inspired a Nation. ( Stockbridge, Mass: Berkshire House Publishers, 1993), cover. 2 Robert Hughes. Nothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 231. 3 Laure Norton Moffatt. Ed. Maureen Hart Hennessey and Anne Knutson. Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People. (High Museum of Art: Atlanta; The Norman Rockwell Museum: Stockbridge, Mass., Harry Abrams, Inc.: New York, 1999), 23. 4 Halpern, Richard. Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).134. 2 critic Robert Hughes stated, “practically none of his audience ever saw an original Rockwell.”5 As will be discussed here, Rockwell’s work still provokes either mythical assumptions of anachronistic naiveté, or anti-propagandist cynicism. Rockwell completed his first paid works of illustration almost thirty years prior to the 1943 publication of Four Freedoms, a collection of four works: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want, inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt’s speech in early 1941. By this time, Rockwell’s illustrations were already well known as ubiquitous representations of American culture. He had earned over one million dollars painting for advertising agencies, and publications such
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