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| The Facts of Life, Norman Rockwell |
Itâs a sad fact that in the United States one can defame the reputation of a dead person with impunity and his or her loved ones and heirs can do nothing to stop it. Such is the case with Deborah Solomonâs American Mirror: the Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, which characterizes Rockwell as a complex, depressed, repressed gay man whose repression led to pedophiliac urges expressed in his paintings.
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| A Scout is Helpful, 1941, Norman Rockwell |
A nice personâone not looking for duplicity everywhereâwould agree with Rockwellâs granddaughterâs assessment: âMy grandfather was a charming, kind, generous man; his models, without exception, say that posing for him was one of the highlights of their lives. He had a marvelous sense of humor, was a remarkable observer of people and human behavior…â
Rockwell was a fantastically successful illustrator because his ear was perfectly tuned to the 20th century zeitgeist, which celebrated work, home, family and children. Of course, Deborah Solomon is in perfect tune with the zeitgeist of our times, which holds that there is nothing good in this world. Nor is there any privacy, apparently.
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| The Babysitter, 1927, Norman Rockwell |
Abigail Rockwell has done an excellent job of debunking Solomonâs sources, but she gets little traction in modern media, because sheâunfortunatelyâis working at cross-purposes to our modern world. We like knowing that others are âno better than they should be.â
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Rosie the Riveter, 1943, by Norman Rockwell. Of this iconic painting, Solomon said, âYou know who else is masturbating? Rosie the Riveter. Women to him [Rockwell] were sexual demons. Over here, the riveting-gun penis on her lap, and in the background these pulsating red waves. Even though she’s a worker she’s not working, she’s just eating and satisfying her desires.â
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But why is it being gay is so frequently the âsecret sinâ of which artists are accused? (For a start, see Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and Leonardo Da Vinci; never mind that their culture cannot be transcribed literally into our culture.) And why did a publisher like Farrar, Straus and Giroux publish an outrageous, unsubstantiated claim of a putative link between homosexuality and pedophilia? If that had come from the Right, the howling would have been deafening.
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