Cool painting. My old dog reminds me of this, does a lot of just sitting unless you reach out with a treat. Safe travels. Welcome back to Mo
Roadblock, from 1949 ...good one. Like a lot of great painters/artists, they work from their minds. From Biography.com: Rockwell's reasons for painting what he did were grounded in the world that was around him. "Maybe as I grew up and found the world wasn't the perfect place I had thought it to be, I unconsciously decided that if it wasn't an ideal world, it should be, and so painted only the ideal aspects of it," he once said. Pretty good plan...
"In this painting, Norman Rockwell shows us how a tiny creature can almost completely paralyze the world around it - the butterfly effect ... The scene is happening in Los Angeles, at the corner of 7 th street and Rempart Boulevard This little bulldog blocks the entire alley. Not only does it prevent the truck from moving forward, but the many people present at this location have all stopped their activity. There were originally 24 characters on this chart * , but the post banner in one mask, and the three passengers of the car are gone. Maybe a crop requested by the publishers of the Post, and executed by William H. Rapp, the magazine's chief editor? (See the previous article "Bottom of the Sixth") ... Surely not happy, Norman! In any case, they are more than 20 on the cover of the Post ... not including the bulldog, the cat and the pigeons! Initially, Rockwell wanted a red truck, but the one he had booked with the "Storage Bekins" was white * , like all their fleet, by the way ... No problem! Bekins had the truck repainted in red! We do not look at the expense when it is for the favorite painter of the Americans! The driver of the truck seems to lose patience, while the co-driver (how did he get out of the truck, by the way? ...) deploys treasures of diplomacy to decide the dog to decamp. The scrubber stopped, and the postman stops his tour for a moment to watch, mockingly. The woman on her balcony is in a trance! It is surely her dog that is downstairs, and she imagines the worst for him. She just finished laying out her clothes. Her husband and grandson also look at the scene, but seem much less stressed than the mother who laughs, bending over the window. On the second floor, the violin teacher waits for his student, stuck by the scene on the opposite side The cyclist had to get off his bicycle, impossible for her to pass. She takes her trouble while waiting for the situation to settle down. The children ran, surely alerted by the various cries and honking of the truck. The car in front of the truck is blocked. It amuses the passengers of the car. The man on the left has come down from the car and seems to be riding on the stage. (This is actually Henry Dahl, painter and friend of Rockwell, who has dedicated to him one of the sketches * made for this painting "This is my good friend / Henry Dahl Autore / his mouth isn ' This is my good friend / author Henry Dahl / His mouth is not as big in reality / Sincerely / Norman Rockwell- ") On the other hand, it does not entertain at all the lady in the hat, right next to the pupil-musician. She has pursed lips (and surely also the tight ass!) And wonders what neighborhood she is. This is obviously not his world ... The little girl seems pensive, and the woman behind her takes advantage of this unexpected pause to put the nose out. At the top, a person is leaning out the window to know what rhyme all this din. The cat, the hairs erect, watching his intimate enemy be begged to leave, and a pigeon takes advantage of this casual carelessness of the cat to land on the clothesline. The painter makes a pose to give his opinion, and his model quickly dressed to enjoy the scene too. How will all this end? Maybe the solution would be to restart the truck for the bulldog to get scared and run off? Find here * , here too * and again here * some of the models who posed for this cover. By the way, the young boy with the violin is none other than a Norman Rockwell self-portrait that reminds us that when he was a child he had taken two violin lessons. He was well advised not to persist in this way and to find another artistic passion than music by developing his gift for painting! About the painter who appears at the window, this is Joe Mugnaini *. Rockwell had met him during his stay in Los Angeles in late 1948 and early 1949. They quickly became friends and Rockwell insisted on showing it on the cover of the Post. He even asked the publishers to quote Joe in an article. (Later, Joe Mugnaini was one of the best illustrators - the best known and recognized - news of Ray Bradbury ) One of the sketches of "Roadblock" is also dedicated to him * . Here are other sketches * and sketches * made for this cover. In his controversial book " American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell"last year, Deborah Solomon suggests that this friendship for Joe Mugnaini was rather special, (from the 2nd paragraph) ** in the same way as the friendship that linked Rockwell and Fred Hildebrandt (from the 3rd paragraph) *** Solomon wants to see homosexual impulses in Rockwell's approach and even talks to us about pedophile attraction in his paintings made with children, but that it does not care for him! - what one deals with his sexual practices, to Solomon? It advances to what to want to discredit an artist adulated, especially that it is only suppositions, she advance no proof! Her book was well sold, that's probably what she was looking for.Rockwell's family protested a book she calls "pure fiction" **** . And many journalists have cracked down on his arguments and sided with the painter . ***** Case to follow ... * These photos come from the Archives of the " Norman Rockwell Museum ", Stockbridge, Massachusetts. ** Excerpt from the book " American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell " by Deborah Solomon at Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2013 © *** " Inside America's great romance with Norman Rockwell ": Article published in October 2013 on www.smithonian . Article published on December 04, 2013 on www.csmonitor.com ***** Article "False Portrait" of December 10, 2013 on the website www.firstthing.com by Patrick Toner" http://www.norman-rockwell-france.com/rockwell-1949.php
My grandmother subscribed to the Saturday Evening Post for years and one of my favorite things to do when I came to this house that live in now was to take it off the table where it was always placed and study the Rockwell drawing. Thanks for digging up the info on it Sancho.
Thanks for the picture and the info about it. Americana at it's Finest, a Norman Rockwell moment in time!
Here's some additional information on this painting: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2016/american-art-n09503/lot.24.html
Just stopped in at Hannibal, Mo. after leaving the Meltdown Drags. There in a museum they had 15 original drawings by Norman Rockwell, about Tom Sawyer. Pretty cool, I never saw an “ original “ in person before. Bones
Not saying it isn't real but what makes you say that? That "perspective design" is also the painting. It just shows the dog as the focal point....
Look at the photos of the moving truck, it was a Bekins truck. Rockwell changed it to "Pepies" in his painting.
To me the roadster is a '30-31, with the round windshield frame, and the hinged posts. The dash roll seems to have a bead in it as well, like a late A roadster should. I think the engine is a flathead with the right side upper radiator hose shown right where it should be. No SBC's yet in 1949. I'd even guess the shell to be a '32 if I had to. I bet Norman just looked through an issue of Hot Rod for the car's perspective.
It says that 72 photos were taken and Rockwell selected 40 to work with. Based on that I gotta believe there's picture of the roadster languishing somewhere. Here's another cool one of his.
Hmmmm....makes me wonder. If Norman had been a hotr odder, what would his car have looked like? If he was alive today and could commission a car, what would that look like? I bet it would be a super cool nostalgia '32. Or maybe he would have gone non-Ford just to be different. Anyway, one of the links above goes to an article indicating the painting was auctioned at $4.7 million. The guy could field a couple of AMBR contenders by selling just one of his paintings.
Like Bones said, I also had never seen a Norman Rockwell original painting before, just many posters, magazine covers and other printed stuff. I finally ran across one in a museum somewhere and the difference was amazing. I was just mesmerized by the painting. In the future I plan to scout out more opportunities to view the original paintings. Sancho, it was really fun to read the back story behind this image. Thanks!
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