Photo of Norman Rockwell and Grandma Moses, circa 1949. Photographer unknown. Norman Rockwell Museum Digital Collections. ©NRELC: Niles, IL.

It’s Norman Rockwell’s birthday (February 3, 1894 to be exact)! To celebrate, Norman Rockwell Museum is offering free admission on Friday, February 3, 2012, to all Normans, Normas, and anyone else celebrating a birthday on that date!

The fun continues on Tuesday, February 7, 2012, when we will celebrate the 200th birthday of Rockwell’s literary hero, Charles Dickens! The Museum will offer free admission on that date to all Charlies, Charlenes, Chucks, and those who share the same birthday. And be sure to catch the exhibition Norman Rockwell and the Ghost of Dickens, on view at the Museum through March 4, 2012.

Claire Williams and models posing for Norman Rockwell's "Woman at Home," 1959. Norman Rockwell Museum Digital Collections. ©NRELC: Niles, IL.

First Friday of each month, January through June

February 3, March 2, and April 6, 2:30 p.m.
Find out what it was like to pose for America’s favorite illustrator from Rockwell’s own models, who share their personal experiences. Free with Museum admission.

Student: Casey Thomas, Title: "Shades of Red", School: Drury High School, Grade: 12

EXHIBITION OPENING EVENT

Saturday, February 4 from 1 to 4 p.m.
Opening Commentary at 2pm
Join us to meet the region’s talented young artists at the opening of this lively installation featuring original works in all media. Multi-media artist Ricky Bernstein will offer remarks at 2p.m. Refreshments will be served!

Artwork by Everett Raymond Kinstler, 2011. Oil on canvas. Collection of the artist. ©Everett Raymond Kinstler. All rights reserved.

Saturday, March 10, 2012, 5 to 7 p.m.

Commentary at 5:30 p.m. by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler

Portrait of Theodore Geisel (“Dr. Seuss”), Everett Raymond Kinstler, 1982. 44” x 44”. Collection of the Hood Museum, Dartmouth College. Artwork ©1982 Everett Raymond Kinstler. All rights reserved.

Stockbridge, MA, January 20, 2012—There are many ways to succeed as an artist. For Norman Rockwell, one of the ways to navigate the changing field of illustration was to accept commissions to create portraits of politicians, musicians, and movie stars. Contemporary artist Everett Raymond Kinstler faced the same issues during the 1950s, as the popularity of television, graphic design, and photography challenged the role of illustration in modern culture. Shifting his focus to portraiture, Kinstler went on to become one of America’s leading portrait artists, creating a veritable Who’s Who gallery of some of the most recognizable faces of American history and culture through the last seven decades. A new exhibition at Norman Rockwell Museum examines Kinstler’s career in both the art of illustration and fine portraiture, and his ability to capture realistic likenesses infused with a passion for storytelling—Everett Raymond Kinstler, Pulps to Portraits is on view at the Museum from March 10 through May 28, 2012.

Like Rockwell, Kinstler notes that “painting people was always what I enjoyed most.” This made the artist’s transition into portraiture a natural progression, and over the years his clients have included such notable figures as Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, Will Barnet, Tony Bennett, Dave Brubeck, Alexander Calder, Benny Goodman, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Liv Ullmann, and Tom Wolfe. Original oil-on-canvas paintings of each of these figures will be featured in the exhibition, along with dynamic portraits of fellow illustrators Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg, Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), and Norman Rockwell. The exhibition will document Kinstler’s transition from the illustration field, through early examples of book covers, magazine illustrations, and comic book pages, created in a variety of mediums. A collection of Kinstler’s current projects reveals the continued influence of illustration and motion pictures on the artist’s canvas.

“Kinstler connects to his subjects through feeling and imagination,” notes exhibition curator Martin Mahoney. Everett Raymond Kinstler, Pulps to Portraits looks at the way illustration has shaped the artist’s work and working methods, and how such figures as James Montgomery Flagg became important mentors for him. Presented as part of Norman Rockwell Museum’s “Distinguished Illustrator Series,” highlighting the contributions of contemporary creators, the exhibition is coordinated by the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, the nation’s first research institute devoted to the art of illustration.

An accompanying exhibition catalogue contains articles that discuss Kinstler’s work and influences, including an essay from William H. Gerdts, an art historian and Professor Emeritus of Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Gerdts is the author of over 25 books on American art.

Support for Everett Raymond Kinstler: Pulps to Portraits is made possible in part through the generosity of The Dr. Seuss Fund at the San Diego Foundation, Mr. Ernest Steiner, Mr. & Mrs. Andrew Hilton, Mrs. Helen Powell, Mrs. Thomas Evans, Mr. & Mrs. Ray Ellis, Mr. & Mrs. Michael Horvitz, and Mr. Forrest E. Mars, Jr.

Additional support has been provided by Mr. & Mrs. Tony Bennett, Ms. Mary Higgins Clark, Mr. William J. Flynn, Mr. & Mrs. Alfred U. Elser, Jr., Mr. & Mrs. Peter Martin, Mr. & Mrs. George Munroe, Mr. Marne Obernauer, Jr., Mr. John Doyle Ong, Mr. & Mrs. Russell Palmer, Mr. & Mrs. Alex Rosenberg, and Mr. John Silber.

Exhibition Related Programs and Events

Members Opening Event

Saturday, March 10, 5 to 7 p.m.

Commentary at 5:30 p.m. by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler.

Be our guest for this special evening with Everett Raymond Kinstler, the prominent American portraitist who began his career as a comic book artist and illustrator working for the popular publications of his day. The artist’s original illustrations and portraits of noted celebrities will be on view in this exploration of his outstanding career in the arts. Reception to follow with refreshments and a cash bar. Museum members free, guests $20. RSVP 413.931.2221, or email RSVP@nrm.org.

Portrait Academy

Friday, March 30, 1 to 4 p.m.

Saturday, March 31, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Join us for this special weekend with the National Portrait Society. Noted artists Everett Raymond Kinstler, Dawn Whitelaw, Michael Shane Neal, and Edward Jones will demonstrate the art of fine portraiture in a series of workshops that offer creative approaches to capturing convincing likenesses. $175, $159 Museum members, for both days.

Art Lecture and Demonstration

The Art of Portraiture with Everett Raymond Kinstler

Saturday, April 14, 1 to 4 p.m.

Learn the tricks of the trade from master portraitist Everett Raymond Kinstler, who will share wisdom gleaned from decades of experience as an illustrator and painter of the most notable figures of our day. $25, $20 for Museum members.

April School Vacation Week Workshops

Hold That Pose! Portraiture for Children

Monday through Friday, April 16 through 20, 1 to 4 p.m.

Explore the art of portraiture with a little inspiration from two masters of the art form, Norman Rockwell and Everett Raymond Kinstler. For ages seven and up. Take one or take them all. $15, $12 Museum members.

Have Your Portrait Painted by a Master

Norman Rockwell Museum will offer a rare opportunity to acquire a personally-created, original artwork by master portraitist, Everett Raymond Kinstler. Graciously donated by the artist to benefit Norman Rockwell Museum, the chance to sit for this portrait and own the final oil painting will be awarded to the highest bidder following a special online auction. Details and bidding instructions on this unique custom portrait will be available at www.nrm.org/2011/09/everett-raymond-kinstler-pulps-to-portraits

About Everett Raymond Kinstler

Born in 1926, Everett Raymond Kinstler was recognized early in life for his artistic talents and supported by his parents, who taught him that it is a gift to be able to work and do something one loves for a living. A native New Yorker, Kinstler developed an early appreciation for the illustration arts during this period, becoming an avid fan of the periodicals that were filled with the work of the top rate illustrators of the day.

Kinstler began his own career at age 16, drawing comic books, book and magazine illustrations, as well as covers for paperback books. As one of the “golden age” era of comic book artists, he created illustrations for such classic pulp magazines as The Shadow and Doc Savage. His early work taught him to connect with the reader and tell a story, essential skills that brought him additional work as a freelance artist.

Kinstler studied at the Art Students League, under American illustrator and impressionist painter, Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1961). DuMond’s influence on the artist was reflected in his oft-repeated statement, “I won’t try to teach you to paint, but to see and observe.” Kinstler would later teach at the school himself, from 1969 to 1974.

In 1949, a touchstone year in his life and career, Kinstler moved into his own “real” studio when DuMond assisted him in securing a space in the historic National Arts Club, where he continues to work today. That same year, he sought out and befriended one of his artistic idols, illustrator James Montgomery Flagg. Their friendship continued until Flagg’s death in 1960, a professional relationship that Kinstler remembers as “my greatest influence.”

In the 1960s, the artist approached Portraits, Inc., a New York-based company connecting portraitists with sitters. Following several success commissions, Kinstler ultimately made the transition from illustrator to portraitist, and soon established himself as one of the nation’s foremost portrait painters.

Among Kinstler’s more than 1200 portraits are such well-known personalities as Tony Bennett, Carol Burnett, James Cagney, Betty Ford, Gene Hackman, Katharine Hepburn, Lady Bird Johnson, Paul Newman, Peter O’Toole, Gregory Peck, and John Wayne. Others include authors Arthur Miller, Ayn Rand, Tennessee Williams, and Tom Wolfe; Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harry Blackmun; business and government leaders such as John D. Rockefeller lll, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 6 U.S. Governors, four U.S. Secretaries of State, and the presidents of universities and colleges including Brown, Harvard, Oklahoma, Princeton, Smith, Wellesley, Williams, and Yale.

Kinstler has painted more than 50 cabinet officers, more than any artist in the country’s history. Seven Presidents — Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — have posed for him. His portraits of Ford and Reagan are the official White House portraits.

The artist has been awarded honorary doctorates by Rollins College in 1983 and the Lyme Academy College of Art in 2002. The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., has acquired 75 of his original works for its permanent collection. He is also represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, etc. In 1999, Kinstler received the Copley Medal from the Smithsonian, National Portrait Gallery, its highest honor. Memberships include: National Academy of Design (N.A.), Allied Artists of America, American Watercolor Society, Pastel Society of America (Hall of Fame), Audubon Artists, Copley Society of Boston (life), National Arts Club.

Through almost seven decades in the arts, Kinstler has kept his skills sharp and his approach to his work fresh by painting from life. Whether he is devoting time to painting portraits or landscapes, or his recent series of art inspired by classic cinema and popular American icons, Everett Raymond Kinstler continues to express his love of the artistic process and connection with his subjects and viewers.

Learn more about the artist at his website: www.everettraymondkinstler.com

About Norman Rockwell Museum’s Distinguished Illustrator Series

The Norman Rockwell Museum Distinguished Illustrator Series honors the unique contributions of outstanding visual communicators today. Presented by the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, the nation’s first research institute devoted to the art of illustration, the Distinguished Illustrator Series reflects the impact and evolution of Norman Rockwell’s beloved profession, exploring a diverse and ever-changing field.

"Freedom of Speech," Norman Rockwell, 1943. Oil on canvas, 45 ¾” x 35 ½”. Story illustration for "The Saturday Evening Post," February 20, 1943. Norman Rockwell Museum Collections. ©1943 SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN

Educating Students for a Rapidly Changing World

By the 18^th century, scientific studies yielded an illuminating artistic interest in differentiating the quality of light and color seen at night versus that experienced during the day. The color of things we see is based upon the wavelength of light that bounces back into our eye’s cones from the object being viewed. At night in the dark, the eye’s rods take over and because they are efficient at collecting light we are able to see in the dark. But what the eye’s rods do not do well is to distinguish between different colors so what we see takes on grayish tones.  As artificial light began to illuminate the night, artists like Joseph Wright ofDerby took an interest in and sometimes even painted comparative pictures of this phenomenon revealing the same location when seen at night and during the day.

Joseph Wright ofDerby(1734-1797)
Matlock Tor by Moonlight, 1777-80
Oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, General Membership Fund, 48.4

Other artists considered the limited palette of night a thing of beauty. Early 20^th century American Ashcan painter Robert Henri wrote in his 1923 guide to painting, The Art Spirit, “The beauty of night is not so much in what you cannot see as in what you can see. It is a fine thing, after the brilliant reds and blues and yellows of daylight, to see the close harmony of evening and night.”**

Beginning in 1920, illustrators Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell were commissioned to create a group of advertising illustrations for the Edison Mazda division of General Electric focused on the goodness of life in the light. The name Mazda was used by GE for its Edison Mazda lamp as a reference to the god of light in Persian mythology, Ahura Mazda, Lord Wisdom (Ahura means light and Mazda means wisdom). By 1927 Rockwell had painted at least twenty advertising illustrations for Edisonthat were used in magazine ads and for store displays. Most of these illustrations pictured people gathered indoors in electric light enjoying daily activities or familial interactions. The one pictured here, And the Symbol of Welcome Is Light, is the only Rockwell scene from this group that is set out doors. Even though Rockwell chose to set the scene under the light of a full moon, it is the combined glow from the various household lights, party lights, and even car head lights that make this illustration compelling.

Rockwell used the light radiating through the house’s windows and open door to silhouette the heads of the adult and child as they leave the car they arrived to the party in; the welcoming hostess backlit in the doorway glows like an angel in an illuminated manuscript with her arms outstretched in hospitality—inviting her guests out of the darkness and into the light; the colorful Japanese paper lanterns hang from and define the equally welcoming branches of the large tree that shade and protect the household even as the open spaces in its branches reveal the full moon; and the face of the car’s driver is seen in the reflected light cast from the control panel of the car’s dashboard.***

As we can see the advent of easy artificial light changed our perceptions of what was possible and expected until it became the new norm, as in the Yvonne Jacquette painting below. Jacquette paints bird’s-eye views of cities and landscapes. This one reveals the artificial light that defines the landscape at night when seen from above.

Yvonne Jacquette (b. 1934)
Route 3, to Augusta, Maine, 2008
Oil on canvas
Courtesy   D.C. Moore Gallery,NY

No longer is the art of illuminating darkness a transforming phenomenon.  Instead we are beginning to view our light drenched world as in need of toning down the light. As the English playwright Christopher Fry titled his 1954 play, “The dark is light enough.”

* First published as an ad in the Saturday Evening Post (August 7, 1920): 61.

** See, Robert Henri, The Art Spirit (Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1923): 39.

*** Since the car has a front seat open to the elements and a protected back seat I believe the style is a cabriolet.

January 12, 2012

By Joyce K. Schiller, Curator, Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, at the Norman Rockwell Museum

Gillis & Gwyneth: A Cultural Comparison
By Lisa Perrin

Presently, most Americans receive their information and entertainment from the Internet. Even television, a revolutionary advancement in its time, is becoming an antiquated technology. It is difficult for my generation to conceive a time when magazines held power and influence in American homes. The kind of magazines people waited in anticipation for, talked about, and wrote back to. The Saturday Evening Post is one such magazine. Handling it gently in gloves it is like some fragile relic of a distant culture. With the April 11^th, 1942 issue of The Saturday Evening Post in one hand and the September 2011 issue of Elle in the other it is a curious comparison seventy years in the making. It is fascinating to consider what has changed in American life and consciousness. What we care about now, the way we advertise, and whom we show in magazines has all changed. We are a completely different culture from the days of The Saturday Evening Post.

This particular edition of The Post is unique because it was released during World War II. And the war is mentioned in several editorials and advertisements in the issue. The cover is the most striking element of any magazine. It is what catches our eye from the newsstand and piques our interest. Norman Rockwell has illustrated this particular cover. On a lush crimson background is a solitary figure, a young man, with an incredulous expression that relates engrossed interest and surprise. We quickly discern that he is a soldier from his uniform. The object that is fascinating him so much is not a weapon of war but a newspaper from home. We know it is from home because Rockwell has plainly titled it “The Hometown News,” and the newspaper is marked up with blue pen, surely notes from mom to make sure “Willie” sees certain stories. Beside the young man is a tub of half-peeled apples and a great roll of other newspapers with an envelope. There is so much to explore in this cover. There is the depiction of the solider doing an ordinary task. This would have been a comforting image to mothers at home who would prefer to think of their sons peeling apples then on the fields of battle. This was when American patriotism was flying high. And this young man, Willie Gillis, represented hundreds of young men recruited in the war effort. Another point of interest is the sight of this young man pouring over a newspaper, which is something we don’t see too many young people doing these days. He, like the readers of The Post, got their information through the written word. Even with the cloud of a terrible war this cover evokes nostalgia for a simpler time, a time of innocence and Americana.

My September issue of Elle has two covers this month. Both feature actress Gwyneth Palthrow. Both are photographs. Unlike Rockwell who signed his work, it is difficult to discover the name of the photographer. On one side we see her profile. She is wearing a chunky knit sweater and her blonde hair is tied into a pony-tail. She is back-lit in a dreamy way that makes her seem angelic and far-way. This contrasts heavily with the other cover on the reverse side. Gwenyth is looking directly at her viewer through smoky eyes. Her hair is loose. She is wearing a black mini dress with huge furry sleeves. One hand is placed stylishly on her hip. The other hand showcases a massive diamond ring. Her black dress stands out against the stark white background. She is a glamorous celebrity looking the part. She does not represent the every-many like Willie Gillis but rather the fetishized ideal. She is not away at war but in a photography studio. She is real and he is fictionalized. And yet Willie seems much more accessible. Their clothes say a lot about them. Willie is in the army; Gwenyth is a rich style icon. She represents the current American obsession with celebrity. In common, they are both solitary figures on solid backgrounds. The images overlap with the name of the magazine. They are both icons but in very different ways.

America has changed. It is undeniable. These two magazine covers reflect a shift of thinking in this country. We seem to prefer photographs to illustrations, celebrities to ordinary people, sex to wholesomeness. We don’t seem to want the rich narrative of a Rockwell cover but the flat image of a celebrity that tells no story at all. It is difficult not to leaf through The Post with a certain kind of nostalgia for a simpler time where American heroes were soldiers, not celebrities.