Essay on Norman Rockwell's Brush with History: Capturing American Culture, Racism, and Hope

Norman Rockwell was a painting artist in the 1900s who contributed a lot to preserving American culture. His art mostly consisted of painted images of staged scenes. He would take photographs of these scenes and paint them. Realism was the style of painting that the artist used in his work. He illustrated real-life situations such as civil rights, politics, and racism. Norman's artwork was displayed in a magazine in America for a period of 47 years and was more popular in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of his paintings draw a picture of the madman’s era in the 20th century. His artwork continues to live up to date; images of the paintings are still being printed on clothes. The paintings of Norman Rockwell contain messages on hope, politics, the community, freedom, race, war, and technology. Some of his famous paintings were (Southern Injustice) Murder in Mississippi, which was about unfair killings of civil rights workers; The Problem We All Live With, which demonstrated the integration of America on the basis of race, The Four Freedoms, which consisted of four paintings of human rights which were freedoms to speech, worship, from want and fear and We, Too, Have a Job to Do whose purpose was to inspire scouts to participate in the war.

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Discussion of The Problem We All Live With

This painting has an image of a black girl dressed white from head to toe sandwiched by marshals. Carson (2020) explains that it is a painting of one of the 4 African American children chosen in 1960 to join first grade in William Frantz Elementary School, an all-white school. The name of the Girl was Ruby Bridges, who was six years old at the time. She was being flanked by the marshals to be protected from the whites who had violently responded to the news about desegregating New Orleans schools at the time. Below is an image of the painting from ("Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” A Groundbreaking Civil Rights Painting" 2019)

The white US Marshals’ heads cannot be seen in the image. The girl who is dressed in white dress footwear and a hairband has exaggerated dark skin. There is a squashed tomato on the ground just beside the marshals behind the black girl who seems to have been smashed on the wall. The wall has splattered tomato fluids that would have been caused by applying a lot of force while throwing the tomato. There also are the words “Nigger,” and the initials “KKK” scribbled on the wall. Norman used oil to paint on canvas, with the whole painting having a length of 36 centimeters high and 150 centimeters wide.

In reality, the girl in the painting was Lynda Gunn, who impersonated Bridges. The slurs NIGGER and KKK gave the painting a racial theme. The purpose of the tomato was to Imply that there was a mob on the other side protesting violently. Norman once explained that he had to use ten tomatoes to make the tomato paste on the wall look like it really splashed (Middleton. The whole painting symbolizes the racial discrimination that was rooted in America at that particular error. The girl looked unconcerned with the activities surrounding her; she was walking away from a mob being escorted by Marshals instead of walking with other children and playing. This shows how much racism was a community problem at the time.

The painting can be summarized in three words, racism, community, and poverty. Different individuals interpreted the painting differently. Some like David Malarcher were impressed enough to write a poem in honor of what the painting illustrated. His poetry had the verses: “Their hands are tense / Their gait is rare / Their arms are ready for the fray / The little girl is unaware / That she is history today.” Others just saw the painting and interpreted it as “a picture with the little negro girl.”

Visual elements and principles that Norman used in designing the painting included: movement whereby the eye of a viewer is captured by the girl in white because she is the focus of the picture. He also uses variety by splashing tomatoes on the wall, intriguing the viewers' interest to interpret the painting lastly, he uses contrast in the difference between the color of the girl’s dress and her skin color is eye-catching, and he also does not show the heads of the marshals so as to draw attention to the girl which he explains later saying that if he had shown their faces, many people would not have seen the girl (Middleton.

Generally, Norman Rockwell was an open-minded artist who made many historical paintings that contributed to American culture and gave hope in a discouraging era of war and extreme racism. All his paintings demonstrate his patriotism, love for family, and desire for positive change. He simply was a talented artist whose artwork is diverse and very significant in the art world.

Bibliography

Carson, Tom. "The true story of the awakening of Norman Rockwell." Vox. 2020. https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/2/19/21052356/norman-rockwell-the-problem-we-all-live-with-saturday-evening-post.

Middleton, Tiffany. "Norman Rockwell's The Problem We All Live With: Teaching Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board." Social Education 75, no. 6 (2011): 329-333.