Norman Rockwell, America's most famous painter/illustrator. The bio was good but not enough of his painting were showcased. None of my favourites are in this book. ( )

It's funny how ingrained Norman Rockwell has become into American identity even after all of these years. Maybe you're aware of his artwork through that one painting in the dentist's office, or a history textbook that points to a particular frame of his work as embodying an era. Almost any American is aware of him and might even find themselves flipping through this book, pointing at a particular image, and saying "Hey, I've seen this before!"

That being said, this book is much better for getting associated with the man's work than with his life. The author is constantly referencing the man's autobiography, which leads me to believe that it would be a much better source for learning about his life then here. Still, it is enjoyable to paw through this book and see an entire generation go past your eyes. ( )

I've always found it strange art that is extremely popular with the masses is eschewed by the critics of the day. So Norman Rockwell is regarded as an illustrator rather than an "artist". I wonder how history will view it. I must confess that I've always really loved Rockwell's paintings. Maybe it's his realism....maybe it's his sense of humour....or his cartoonists eye for the essence of every day life that he captures so well and all of us can identify with it. Even I can. And I'm not American. This is a large format book...large enough to capture some of the details from Rockwell's paintings...though he painted them large and they were reduced for the magazine covers etc.....which helps with the detail. The exhibition and book cover a large slice of his artistic career from 1910 to 1970. And there are a large number of his paintings and drawings over that period included. He died in 1978 at the age of 84 so I guess in 1970 he was 76 and able to look back on a long and illustrious career. There are a few large fold-out pictures but most are confined to the rather large page size of the book. I discovered, in my researches that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were both collectors of Rockwell's paintings. "That -- drama, pathos and passion, inexorably bound -- is Rockwell's legacy. His, agenda, Spielberg reminds us, was a "benign but important agenda," a desire for community, an appreciation of responsibility and patriotism, and the life-long conviction that the key to understanding our nation was to embrace our neighbor.
Anyway, bottom line, I really enjoyed the book...it told me quite a lot about Rockwells' methodology: loose sketch of an idea, then gathering props, costumes models, individual drawings of the various parts, or photographs, then a full scale drawing in great detail, then colour sketches, and finally putting it all together in the final (oil) painting. No wonder his work is so carefully crafted!
Happy to give this book five stars. I really enjoyed it. ( )

i don't like this style of art book where the text and pictures are intermingled. you never know what works are being talked about as they are not on the page you're reading. works from different time periods are put together. too many back and whites. too many small pictures. ( )

Summary: A collections of the works of Norman Rockwell covering a 60 year period.