Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 25, 1993 TAG: 9312250165
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 15 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: MARTIE ZAD THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This video commemorates the upcoming centennial year of Rockwell's birth in 1894.
Narrated by Mason Adams, the one-hour tape ($29.98, 1-800-843-9843) includes commentary from art historians and social critics, including Erma Bombeck and Frank Deford, as well as remembrances from close friends and remarks by Rockwell himself.
The video provides insights to the technical aspects of Rockwell's many paintings, and provides discussions of what inspired him, how he composed his paintings and why his art continues to touch Americans.
Rockwell noted simply, "I just painted life the way I wanted it to be. Maybe I unconsciously decided that, even if it wasn't an ideal world, it should be."
This retrospective originally was produced by Pittsburgh affiliate WQED as a PBS special and will play a part in the Norman Rockwell centennial celebration in February 1994.
Last June a museum dedicated to his art was opened in Stockbridge, Mass., and has attracted an unexpectedly large number of visitors.
In all, the museum houses 500 Rockwell pictures, 172 of them finished works. His 321 Saturday Evening Post covers, which ran between 1916 and 1963, have been called "a scrapbook of America." They cover the period from this country's horse-and-buggy era to the space age.
Rockwell, who died at 84 in 1978, began his career in 1916, when as a brash young art student, he walked into the editorial offices of the Saturday Evening Post with a portfolio under his arm and walked out as the cover artist for one of America's all-time favorite magazines.
Reflecting some of the basic strengths and weaknesses of Americans and their society, his works embraced both success and failure and envisioned a better world to dream about and share.
by CNB