News-Press from Fort Myers, Florida • Page 78

2G THE NEWS-PRESS, SUNDAY, JANUARY 16, 2000 Travel made ordinary extraordinary His largest traveling exhibit in Chicago first 24. San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, Oct. 28-Dec. 31, 2000 Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Feb. 24-May 26, 2001 The Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, Stockbridge, June 9-Oct.

8, 2001 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, N.Y., Nov. 7, 2001-Feb. 11,2002 everybody had their favorites, and we felt it was important to include them in this collection." The exhibition will be at Atlanta's High Museum of Art through Jan. 30.

The other stops on the tour include: Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, 111.. Feb. 26-May21. The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., June 17-Sept. Which is why "Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People is touring America for the next several years.

The largest traveling Rockwell exhibit ever, "Pictures is also the first retrospective of all his major works to hit the road since 1972. "We know everybody can't get to Stockbridge," says Maureen Hart Hennessey, chief curator of the Rockwell Museum. "We knew morning: The kids are so hyper they almost leap out of the car, the dog sticks its head out the window; a big day is clearly in the offing. In the bottom half, the day is nearly done, if it is in fact the same day, and the trip is over. Everyone is exhausted.

Dad slumps in the front seat; mom's dozing, little sister is bored, little brother is asleep in the back. Only Grandma has not changed expression or posture. A cute scene? Yes. But also emblematic of an era when more and more families had the time, the car and the disposable income to venture out on longer vacations than ever before. Rockwell could portray change with an undercurrent of fear.

This is clearly evident in "Problem," which shows both the struggle of the civil rights movement and its triumph: Whatever the little girl has to walk through, she will go to school. He could also be ambivalent about to show us the very essence of what the country had and stood to lose during World War 11. Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address, they brilliantly make the personal the universal. And nowhere is this more true tnan in Notice, in the lower right-hand corner, the man looking out right at you, eyebrows raised.

Those eyes invite us in, make us members of the family, tell us that this is our home, our table. In this world, mothers can tuck their children in bed, and a man can speak his mind, and we can worship as we choose. And we can gather, old and young, and celebrate ourselves. In April 1943, the paintings toured America. More than 1 million people viewed them, $132 million in war bonds were sold, as well as 4 million posters.

The paintings became synonymous with the country's independence and hope for the future. No artist has ever captured Americana with such deft detail By DAVE FERMAN Knight RkMer News Service Norman Rockwell was my gran'-pa's hero, and so he was mine. Back then, when I was 7 or 8 or 9, 1 knew that Mr. Rockwell, Gran'pa Harry and I were connected in some way. Gran'pa drew cartoons for the newspaper, and painted and wrote poetry, and I was sure Gran'pa talked to Mr.

Rockwell all the time in secret, and that some day Mr. Rockwell would come to Wichita, Kansas, and the big house on Poplar Street. They'd show me how to paint, and we'd all smoke our pipes (both of them smoked pipes, so I was sure all artists smoked pipes), and tell stories, and Grandma would make dinner, and we'd all sit around, three pais. Then it happened. I was probably 9 and our family drove in from Michigan for Thanksgiving.

We all sat around the table while Grandma brought out the turkey; she sat it down on the table, we all ooohed and aaahed and Gran'pa cut it, and I watched the first piece make its way down to me. There was mashed potatoes and gravy and pie and I sat right next to Gran'pa and he smiled at me. Everything was perfect. After dinner I began going through a book of Rockwell's paintings and Post covers and stopped, dumbfounded and delighted. There, on the page, was the Thanksgiving I had just had Grandma and the turkey, Gran'pa behind her, all of us watching the big bird's final descent everyone smiling, the whole thing.

I had just been in one of Mr. Rockwell's paintings. "Gran'pa, look, it's our Thanksgiving! Look! That lady looks just like Grandma! That's the turkey! How did Mr. Rockwell know?" "Mr. Rockwell knows everyone, Davy." The Rockwell exhibit Recently, in Atlanta, I stood, and I waited, and finally the old couple to my left walked into the next room, and for a moment I was alone with Rockwell's "Freedom From Want." I had hoped to see "Want" and all of Rockwell's paintings for 30 years, ever since I had sat next to my -grandfather and we looked at those change, wary of it.

Notice the slightly threadbare look of the neighborhood the family walks through in 1953's "Walking to Church." Or how the church steeple is lower than the antenna in "New Television Antenna." In these works, Rockwell asks if the city really is preferable to the country, and if we're not replacing our faith in God with our faith in man-made entertainment. But all three paintings make clear his confidence that different generations would be together to face whatever was ahead. The bond would be stretched, but would not break. "The Four Freedoms" series, though, is about nothing changing at all, even as the world is in chaos. The four paintings "Freedom From Want," "Freedom of Speech," "Freedom to Worship" and "Freedom From Fear" use Rockwell's language of everyday America (and that gorgeous light!) for M1 commercial advertising artist both before and during his "Post" career, doing ads for Jell-O, Sun-Maid Raisins, Ford automobiles, and many more.

The images that often sell products the best are those of home and family, generations interacting, and a sense of safety and community Rockwell believed in all this, but he also knew how effective those images were. He had come to the table, too, with a fondness for American and English literature from the 1800s, material familiar to much of his audience. He would do paintings and illustrations based on stories, books and scenes from Mark Twain, Washington Irving and Charles Dickens. All of this was informed by his love of the classics, including Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and the Dutch masters Vermeer and Rembrandt. One of his most famous paintings, 1943's "Rosie the Riveter," shows a young red-headed woman in front of an American flag.

She is looking to her right; in her left hand is a sandwich. Her left arm rests on her right hand, which is on her rivet gun. The painting is a direct quote from Michelangelo's depiction of the prophet Isaiah on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. But perhaps his biggest classic influence was Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Vermeer's placement of characters in a scene and the simple grace with which he portrayed people doing common tasks and having common conversations is all over Rockwell's work, as is his use of light.

Like Vermeer, Rockwell's paintings were often suffused with a soft, golden light, almost a benign presence. This is certainly true of "Want," as well as "Shuffleton's Barbershop" (1950), "Charwomen in Theater" (1946) and 1955's gorgeous "The Marriage License." The last is one of Rockwell's great quiet triumphs: An everyday scene a young couple signing a marriage license at city hall is given a serene and almost religious significance by the light streaming in the window and onto the woman's face. Vermeer's light. Smalltown life. Old folks and little boys.

A kid in his only suit leaving the farm for college and a working-class man speaking up at a town hall meeting. This was Rockwell's sensibility, and the reason so many people loved him: We saw ourselves in his5 work, saw our lives and foibles, with reference points to the past all along the way. He was a visionary Gran'pa's room was a magical place he had a collection of pipes from all over the world, an ashtray that looked like a rattlesnake, a skull, a German rifle and bayonet, a sword from the War of 1812, Confederate money, weathered paperbacks by Damon Runypn and RingLardner. I read those books, and dreamed of writing my own more likely than being a painter, as I could barely draw a stick figure. I watched Gran'pa smoke and draw his cartoons and paint his Christmas cards.

He drew a forest and told me to find the hide-behinds impossible, as hide-behinds were never seen at all because they were so good at hiding behind the trees and the rocks. There were always old issues of the Post around, and I would ask him about them. Who is Rosie the Riveter? Why was she wearing men's Our New Year's "31 or JiOf See Travel Agency FREE M0T0RC0ACH from select cities. Ask your Travel Counselor for details. SAVE $100 per Panama Canal Italian Style By DAVE FERMAI Knight Ridder News Service Norman Rockwell portrayed small-town life in no small part because he lived small-town life and that means that those wanting to see the majority of his work have to venture to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, near the Massachusetts-New York border.

clothes? And he would tell me. One day I was looking through the book of Mr. Rockwell's paintings and I came to one I had wondered about before. It showed a little girl walking with two men in front of her and two men behind. She was black and they were white, but you couldn't see their heads, and there were three Ks drawn together on the wall.

I also noticed that someone had thrown a tomato and it had hit the wall and splattered. Who was this little girl? Where was she walking? Why were these men around her? Who threw the tomato? What did KKK mean? And that other word on the wall, the one that began with an What did that mean? So he told me about people throwing tomatoes at black children because they didn't want them in their schools, about the days when people were sold as slaves, about the KKK and their foolishness and that, no matter what anyone says, nobody is better or worse because of their skin color. I knew a little of this, but not most of it. I grew up in all-white suburban Detroit, where the only black people were athletes or Motown singers on TV. Friends of mine (or, more often, fathers of my friends) used that ugly n-word, but Gran'pa said they were stupid, and liars to boot, and so they were.

It just didn't make any sense not liking someone because they looked different. But who WERE black people? Soon after I found a copy of Sammy Davis "Yes I Can" in my parents' basement and began reading it. And then came books by Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and Dick Gregory, and after that, records by Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and Otis Redding and a lifetime of loving blues and jazz and soul and gospel music. All that started with one Rockwell painting and the voice of Gran'pa. The painting, "The Problem We All Live With," is from 1964, and it illus-.

trates Rockwell's greatest strength: His ability to portray change in America in a positive fight, his conviction that the country would grow stronger through those changes, one generation helping the next. Back in the '20s and '30s, Rockwell's paintings and covers were usually of rural life. But in the '40s and '50s all that changed: His viewpoint was now filtered through scenes of the city, reflecting the move many Americans made from the farm or the small town to the metropolis during those years. Take, for example, 1947's "Going and Coming," the split-screen image of a family going to and returning from a trip. In the top half, it is bright Unrestricted Fare are tor regularly scheduled flights from Southwest Florida International Airport.

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The exhibit is the largest collection of Rockwell's work that has ever gone on tour. After its run at Atlanta's Hieh Museum of Art, it will go to six other museums through February 2002: Chicago Historical Society in Chicago; The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the San Diego Museum of Art in San Diego; the Phoenix Art Museum in Phoenix, The Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. To view "Pictures" is to understand the depth of Rockwell's love of America, iust what a masterful artist and storyteller he was, and how much hope he had for the country coming through all the changes and challenges he saw during his lifetime. Norman Rockwell was a believer.

He believed America was the greatest place on earth, he believed in different generations being comfortable with each other. He thought America was changing for the better, that children were inherently wonderful, that couples should grow old together. He maintained that racists were -idiots, that men should fight for their country but would come home safe and sound and loved. He believed in Thanksgiving and Christmas. He believjed, very strongly, in puppy dogs.

Born in New York City, Rockwell had done his first Post cover in 1916; the magazine began regularly featuring him in 1920. His idea, he once said, was to chronicle American life "as I would like it to be." That meant a pubescent girl looking in the mirror and comparing herself to a movie in a magazine, gossip spreading one person to another, a family walking to church on Sunday morning, a tot discovering his father's Santa Claus costume, an older woman and a boy praying in a crowded downtown restaurant, and hundreds more. A sizable number of his works "Girl at Mirror," "Going and Coming" and certainly "The Four Freedoms" series became the shared visual shorthand of events great and small to several generations of Americans. Rockwell had come along at just the right time to do this, and he had just the right background and influences. For most of his time on the "Post," the magazine was one of the two most popular in America.

Along with circuses, baseball eames and the radio, the "Post" was family entertainment for thousands ot homes. Also, Rockwell never thought art and commerce were strange (or inappropriate) bedfellows. He was a A Special Disney Cruise Line weekend package for Florida Residents! There's never been a better tf time for you to sail and save 3-Day Cruise $QQ with a weekend getaway QT jf I I if per 3rd4lh guesh package exclusively for tmfmfmf child or adult Florida Residents this Winter. hs'' a Destination airlines fares Atlanta $169 DL, FL, AA $766" Chicago $1,582 Cleveland $278 CO, NW, US, TW, DL, AA, UA $1,028 Oetroit $198 DL, US, CO, NW, NK $1,330 Indianapolis $218 TZ, DL, US, NW, CO, AA $790: Las Vegas $338 CO, NW, DL, TW, UA, TZ, AA, HP, US $1,682 Los Angeles $338 DL, NW, TW, CO, HP $1,724 Milwaukee $252 NW, TZ, DL, CO, US, UA, TW, AA $1 024 New York City $192 AA, US, FL, CO $970 Philadelphia $956 Phoenix $338 CO, DL, US, TZ, UA, NW, TW, AA, HP $1,682 Seattle $475 NW, CO, TW, US, HP $1,744 St. Louis $360 TW, DL, CO, NW, UA, US, AA $1,442 Toronto $253 AC, AA, DL, NW, CP, CO, US, UA $1,153 Washington, D.C.

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