August 27, 2018

Do we need another Norman Rockwell?

If we do, this guy's in the running: "Artist Illustrates His Sweet Childhood Memories, And The Results Are Heartwarming" (Bored Panda).

53 comments:

mccullough said...

Make America Great Again is starting to take hold.

Henry said...

It's a Disney movie without the dramatic parts.

Amexpat said...

Not in the same league as NR. Looks like shots from an animated movie.

Henry said...

Snow White and her Very Nice Dad

Henry said...

Beauty and the Best Friend Ever

Henry said...

Alice in Farmland

Virgil Hilts said...

Not sure if within subject but loved this architect's mashup of Kinkade paintings with great american modern houses. https://twitter.com/robyniko/status/1031000496608292872?s=21

gahrie said...

I like them.

rhhardin said...

Somebody's been to Japan.

Bay Area Guy said...

The sentiment is good, but the pictures do seem a little Disney-Cartoonish for my taste.

Love Rockwell, and love the sentiment, though.

PM said...

Dreck.

Saint Croix said...

It's nice but it's not Rockwell, who was way more rambunctious, also funnier, and a bit more cynical.

Rob said...

Rockwell isn't entirely to my taste, but he could paint circles around this guy.

Henry said...

@Virgil Hilts -- That's fun stuff. It's almost too well done and the modernist houses too lovely to be a parody.

Jersey Fled said...

Father's - What a novel concept.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

Yes, America needs another Rockwell. More importantly, America needs a populace that would love Norman Rockwell.

Michael K said...

Rockwell was a real artist, a bit like Wyeth. Not a cartoonist.

Fernandinande said...

Heartwarming

"Wanna watch 'Sweet Childhood Memories'?"

"I heard it was heartwarming."

"Oh. What else is on?"

The Crack Emcee said...

Not even. But he's got a job waiting for him at Pixar.

tim in vermont said...

See Normal Rockwell paintings in person, then get back to me.

Howard said...

puke.

Freeman Hunt said...

"Not even. But he's got a job waiting for him at Pixar."

My thoughts exactly. Guy would make an excellent animator.

Eleanor said...

Rockwell's work had a high attention to detail. Each time you look at one of his Saturday Evening Post's covers you notice things you didn't see before. These illustrations are charming, but superficial. Maybe a sign of the times? The Rockwell Museum is a fun visit, btw.

Robert Cook said...

Sentimental Disney-fied drivel.

Levi Starks said...

It evokes pleasant emotions

William said...

Definitely not Rockwell. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a disturbing back story behind this fixation with happy children.

Robert Cook said...

"Rockwell was a real artist, a bit like Wyeth. Not a cartoonist."

Rockwell was an illustrator, a superior one. He and Wyeth are nothing alike except insofar as they were each technically highly accomplished and they each succeeded at what they were trying to do. I like both of them very much.

Robert Cook said...

"Definitely not Rockwell. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a disturbing back story behind this fixation with happy children."

No, probably not. The artist is just pandering to an audience who will eat it up.

Henry said...

Rockwell was an illustrator, a superior one. He and Wyeth are nothing alike except insofar as they were each technically highly accomplished and they each succeeded at what they were trying to do.

Rockwell was more like N.C. Wyeth than Andrew Wyeth.

Thought even there, Rockwell and N.C., you have a real stylistic difference.

Henry said...

See Normal Rockwell paintings in person, then get back to me.

I've been the Rockwell museum in Stockbridge, MA. After a few rooms of Rockwell, it was a relief to duck into the museum's tiny exhibit of contemporaries. Rockwell is brilliant, but too much Rockwell in one space is like a hall of mirrors.

ambisinistral said...

Geezus -- those paintings are ghastly.

CJ said...

Even worse than I thought they were going to be.

bagoh20 said...

It's certainly a modern take on the Rockwell idea, and by "modern" I mean diminished, shortcutted, easier, and derivative. Still, I like it, just nowhere near as much. It doesn't have a soul.

Tank said...

Kinda creepy. Reminds me of Frozen. Mrs. Tank watched Frozen; Tank had to leave the room Yuuuch.

FullMoon said...

Those pics are great. Artist apparently had a wonderful childhood., or wishes he did.

Rockwell dealt in good feelings. So does this guy.

Neither as good as Gary Larson, obviously.

rhhardin said...

Who was the guy Lileks discovered long ago, who painted like Rockwell but always women with their panties falling down in everyday life.

rhhardin said...

Art Frahm
https://www.lileks.com/institute/frahm/art1.html

BAS said...

Those pictures are drawn on the computer, they don't have the texture that Norman Rockwell's paintings did. They are slick and smooth like a snapchat overlay or a composed instagram pictures.

I guess time goes on and everything changes.

Darrell said...

When I worked in a grocery store in the 1960s, I always tried to get a head of celery in a pretty woman's shopping bag. Just in case.

Robert Cook said...

"Rockwell was more like N.C. Wyeth than Andrew Wyeth."

Yes. This may be partly because they were both illustrators. I think Rockwell admired N.C. Wyeth's work.

Robert Cook said...

That guy Frahm paints nothing like Rockwell. His work is more more akin to the legions of lesser pulp magazine illustrators who were contemporaries of Rockwell.

Andrew said...

I always thought that Rockwell's self-portrait (where he's drawing himself while looking in a mirror) was a work of genius.

I also like the one of a man looking at a Pollack-style painting. It showed that he could have been a modernist if he had chosen to.

Ann Althouse said...

The similarity to Rockwell is in sentiment and in the level of realism depicting sentimental scenes of good people being good.

grackle said...

Do we need another Norman Rockwell?

Yes, because an artist of Rockwell’s talent is always welcome in my world but the artist featured is no Norman Rockwell.

Bilwick said...

He should only be so talented. Never really thought much one way or another about Rockwell's work, until I attended a museum show of his paintings. Seen as paintings rather than magazine illustrations, I found them very impressive.

pacwest said...

There is no similarity to Rockwell in those pictures. None. They may have a feel good aspect, but they have no life in them. Imagine what a Rockwell depicting the three boys looking at their handheld would look like. Entirely different. The excitement of the boys, the focal of the artist, would be a just small aspect of what we could see in a Norman Rockwell painting.

Of course if Rockwell were painting today he probably wouldn't be Rockwell. The culture we live in wouldn't allow it.

Roy Lofquist said...

If a picture is worth a thousand words then Rockwell was the Tolstoy of the easel.

* "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy, 499 pages.

tim in vermont said...

There is a little museum in Hannibal, Missouri with the originals for his illustrations for Huckleberry Finn. Worth the trip, even if Becky Thatcher’s house isn’t.

Big Mike said...

Yes we do, but he’s not it.

reader said...

It seems a little too cartoonish, but I sure miss #3. So a little Rockwellian.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Rockwell changed (improved) over the years. He started as an illustrator, with two-dimensional characters. The paintings became more complicated and messaged over time. There was a Scandinavian school of painting that was old-style socialist, celebrating the life of the common man. Carl Larson is the only one remembered now, I think, and he is regarded as similarly sentimental. It isn't quite so, not with either of them. There is hopefulness and sentimentality, certainly, but it is in the context of realism and people with hard lives.

JMW Turner said...

Carl Larson, yes. I have a couple of illustrated books acquired in the seventies. His style is definitely linear, using washes of color to define dimensionally, very much an illustration, yet controlled, he was an excellent draftsman. After you have seen the chronologically arranged drawings, the effect is of viewing;the children aging, his wife Karin also growing older, but maintaining her loveliness, such charming art that is no longer accepted in this sad, bullshit post modern world.

n.n said...

Perhaps not. How about a Newman Rockford? Diversity.