Rockwell gay

Former New York Times columnist Deborah Solomon’s new biography of Norman Rockwell, American Mirror, hints that America’s “most beloved artist” may have been a closeted male lover man. Rockwell, who died in 1978 and was perhaps best known for his The Saturday Evening Post magazine illustrations, reflected help to America what it looked fond. Solomon, who has written biographies of Joseph Cornell and Jackson Pollock, raises questions that could bring forth fresh interpretations of Rockwell’s work and existence. But is an artist or writer’s sexuality important at all in relation their work if they are, in fact, acting as an American mirror?

In her 493-page publication, Solomon notes that Rockwell “demonstrated an intense need for emotional and physical closeness with men.” She also ponders whether his marriages were part of a way for him to “control his homoerotic desires,” and notes how, while on a camping trip with his male assistant placed a vague comment about how the assistant appeared “most fetching in his long flannels.” The Times quotes a passage in Solomon’s book that questions about Rockwell’s sexuality:

Later in the book, Ms. Solomon writes that “we are made to wonder whethe

Was Norman Rockwell Gay?

Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.
—Norman Rockwell

Born in Recent York City in 1894, Norman Rockwell always wanted to be an creator. Rockwell found accomplishment early. He painted his first commission of four Christmas cards before his sixteenth birthday. While still in his teens, he was hired as art director of Boys’ Life, the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America, and began a successful freelance career illustrating a variety of childish people’s publications.

At age 21, Rockwell’s family moved to Recent Rochelle, New York, where Rockwell position up a studio with the cartoonist Clyde Forsythe and produced work for such magazines as Life, Literary Digest, and Country Gentleman. In 1916, the 22-year-old Rockwell painted his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post, the magazine considered by Rockwell to be the “greatest present window in America.” Over the next 47 years, another 321 Rockwell covers would appear on the cover of the Post. Also in 1916, Rockwell married Irene O’Connor; they divorced in 1930.

The 1930s and 1940s are gen

AMERICAN MIRROR: THE LIFE AND ART OF NORMAN ROCKWELL
CITY OF NIGHT
HAPPINESS: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION

AMERICAN MIRROR: THE LIFE AND ART OF NORMAN ROCKWELL
BY DEBORAH SOLOMON
$28; Farrar, Straus and Giroux

This major look at the work of illustrator Norman Rockwell is a sober, serious, thoughtful analysis of a significant artist and how his life influenced his work. But that doesn't mean a review of the book depend on maintain such high standards. Whenever anyone asked what I was reading, I said "a biography of Norman Rockwell" and immediately added, "It turns out he was probably same-sex attracted, even if Rockwell himself didn't quite realize it." Oh really, they perked up?

Author and critic Deborah Solomon's book doesn't belabor the point or make too much of it, or to be more precise doesn't shift it into gossip. Favor me, she doesn't detect the idea shocking nor downplay what it might mean. But the gentleman who symbolized American heartland values spent decades in therapy and rarely attended religious services? Had three marriages that were almost comical in their abruptness? (Rockwell didn't have marriages of convenience so much as convenient marriages.) Two of them at least were

Источник: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFiLN1iJSFi/

(Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar....)


Over the last year or so, Deborah Solomon’s biographyof Norman Rockwell has gotten a lot of attention, some laudatory, some extremely negative.  Recently, the New York Times listed it in its 100 “Notable” books of 2014.  This is unfortunate, for while the novel is indeed notable, I don’t believe its notoriety is the sort implied through its inclusion on such a list.  It’s mainly notable for its outrageous falsifications and distortions. 


So, you ask, what is so wrong with Solomon’s book?  See my previous postfor some links that will answer that ask for you.  Here, I’ll just summarize.  Solomon is the sort of art critic who leaps immediately to the most facile and gross sexualizations imaginable.  In the case of Rockwell, this approach applies not merely to the artworks, but to Rockwell himself.  Solomon presents Rockwell as a pedophile and as a repressed homosexual.  (She admits that she has no evidence that Rockwell ever molested any children.  But being a pedophile is a function of desires, not of actions.  She also admit