American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell - Hardcover

Solomon, Deborah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374113092 ISBN 13: 9780374113094

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc, 2013

Synopsis

Norman Rockwell, as much as Walt Disney or Ronald Reagan, provided America with a mirror of its dreams and aspirations. As the star illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post for nearly half a century, Rockwell portrayed a fantasy of civic togetherness, of American decency and good cheer. Or, as Deborah Solomon writes in her authoritative new biography, he painted a history of the American people that had never happened. Who was Norman Rockwell? Behind the folksy, pipe-smoking facade lay a surprisingly complex figure-a lonely man all too conscious of his inadequacies. Solomon describes him as an obsessive personality who wore his shoes too small, washed his paintings with Ivory Soap, and relied on the redemptive power of storytelling to stave off depression. He wound up in treatment with Erik Erikson, the influential psychotherapist. American Mirror draws on unpublished papers to explore the relationship between Rockwell's anguished creativity and his genius for reflecting American innocence. The thrill of his work, writes Solomon, is that he was able to use the commercial form of magazine illustration to thrash out his private obsessions. In American Mirror, Solomon, a biographer and art critic, trains her perceptive eye on both the art and the man. She also brilliantly chronicles the visual history of American journalism and the battle pitting photography against illustration.

About this title

Review

In her engaging and ultimately sad biography of Norman Rockwell, Deborah Solomon fills in the partly known life of one of America's most famous and popular illustrator-artists . . . Ms. Solomon's book fully justifies a fresh look at his life. An art critic and author of biographies of Joseph Cornell and Jackson Pollock and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, she offers something new, entertaining and disturbing. Her challenge was to explain a life utterly different from Rockwell's humorous and optimistic paintings. She has told his story with a breadth of facts and narrative finesse. It is a revelation. --John Wilmerding, The New York Times Deborah Solomon has created a biography as vivid and touching as a Rockwell interior. This is the definitive biography of an American master who came in through the back door. --Steve Martin, author of An Object of Beauty American Mirror is a masterpiece--vivid, forthright and insightful. Through superb research and keen interpretation, Deborah Solomon tells the story of an artist so many thought they knew well, and perhaps did not know at all. An epic achievement. --Laurie Norton Moffatt, director of the Norman Rockwell Museum Norman Rockwell turns out not to have lived in the America he invented, the republic of station wagons, Santa Claus, and good citizenship. Deborah Solomon offers up a textured portrait of the man who carried no pictures of his family and never met a therapist he didn't like. Solomon masters foreground, background, and middle ground in this taut, beautifully written biography. --Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography Norman Rockwell remains our country's most beloved, most reviled, and most misunderstood painter. In American Mirror, Deborah Solomon tells his remarkable story with uncommon intelligence and grace.Roz Chast --Various

About the Author

Deborah Solomon is the author of two previous biographies of American artists: Jackson Pollock: A Biography and Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell (FSG, 1997). She has written about art and culture for many publications, and her weekly interview column, Questions For, appeared in The New York Times Magazine from 2003 to 2011. She lives in New York City with her family.

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0374113092
• ISBN 13: 9780374113094
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 512