Autumn 1999 The People’s Painter, by Laurie Norton Moffatt
Norman Rockwell was the people’s artist. The public adored the work of this skilled storyteller. Rockwell received bagfuls of fan mail that applauded his finely honed sense of image-making. While many viewers stared bemused at Jackson Pollock’s dribbled paint and Picasso’s fractured shapes, the people understood Rockwell because he so clearly understood them.
The Saturday Evening Post: What Americans Looked at Before TV, by Christopher Clarke-Hazlett, PhD.
The 20th century has been a visual century. In the decades following 1900, images superseded the written word as the most important form of communication in American culture. They have remained dominant ever since.The Saturday Evening Post: A National Family Magazine, by Maud Ayson
Through most of its history, The Saturday Evening Post was defined as a national family magazine that lauded the virtues of progress and the quest for the “American dream,” while, at the same time, it also evoked a nostalgia for purer, simpler times. By the 1950s, the Post faced the increasing challenges of photo journalism, special-niche publications and the appeal of television. The magazine that once prided itself on its outstanding illustrations, extraordinary mix of writing and latest brand-name product advertisements found it could no longer capture its audience’s interest.Eye on America: Editorial Illustration in the 1990s, by Stephanie H. Plunkett
Art is a part of its time. If we examine the range of art from any era and geographic location, we are able to gain a greater understanding of the concerns, values and attitudes of a society in its time and place. Throughout the ages, contemporary artists have acted as observers, informers and educators, revealing to the rest of us what was, or is, happening around us.