Culture

Prospect recommends: art

December 09, 2010
Bridge Game by Norman Rockwell: a new show will be his first exhibition in Britain
Bridge Game by Norman Rockwell: a new show will be his first exhibition in Britain


Norman Rockwell’s America Dulwich Picture Gallery

15th December-27th March

This exhibition has toured to almost every state in America, but it is the first time Norman Rockwell’s original work has appeared in this country. It is hard to think of a better-loved illustrator of American life, and yet it is only recently that the critically hardheaded have begun to acknowledge the truthfulness in the sweetness of Rockwell’s recreations.

In 1916, aged 22, he painted his first cover for the Saturday Evening Post. Over the next 47 years, his illustrations for the magazine—mischievous boys, star-struck girls, pious churchgoers, loving families, movie stars, soldiers, politicians—became a tableau of the nation. An ace technician, Rockwell cast his characters and dressed his sets with directorial finesse before making dozens of sketches. Chronicling white America through depression, war and postwar prosperity, in the 1960s he lent his skills to the civil rights cause.

Twenty-one years after his death in 1978, New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl laid down the critical gauntlet: “Rockwell’s terrific. It has become too tedious to pretend he isn’t.” As Rockwell’s reputation continues to rise—Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are big collectors—this show brings us all his Post covers and other magazine, book and ad illustrations, for a Christmas glimpse into a lost Arcadia.