Art reveals the world to us in new ways. David and Art is KWBU's weekly feature focusing on art.
The module is hosted by David Smith, an American historian with broad interests in his field. He’s been at Baylor University since 2002 teaching classes in American history, military history, and cultural history. For eight years he wrote an arts and culture column for the Waco Tribune-Herald, and his writings on history, art, and culture have appeared in other newspapers from the Wall Street Journal to the Dallas Morning News.
The very first record he remembers listening to when he was little was Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic’s recording of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and that set him on a lifelong path of loving music and the arts. He’s loved history for almost as long, and finally saw them come together in his career. He believes that history illuminates the arts and the arts illuminate history—that they co-exist and are best understood together.
Follow David on Twitter @DavidASmith12
Showcasing American artist Norman Rockwell's journey from the covers of the Saturday Evening Post to Look magazine.
Norman Rockwell became extremely famous in the United States as a key illustrator for a magazine called the Saturday Evening Post. He thought of himself as a storyteller. His paintings were not just pictures. He wanted them to show settings that were very human. And sometimes, settings that involved deeper and more complicated emotions that defied being put into words.
By the early 1960s however the Post had changed its focus. More and more, its cover illustrations were portraits of celebrities. Rockwell didn’t want to do that. After his paintings had graced a whopping 323 covers of the magazine, he stepped away from it for good. Rockwell’s final cover illustration on an issue of the Saturday Evening Post appeared at the end of May 1963.
He wanted a different outlet for his work, done the way he wanted to do it, and he found it in a magazine called Look. When President Lyndon Johnson took up the cause of civil rights after President Kennedy was assassinated, Rockwell picked up the cause as well. After he left the Post, writes his biographer, “Rockwell began treating his work as a vehicle for progressive causes.”
His first illustration in Look magazine appeared in the January 14, 1964, issue. It portrayed an event that had happened over three years earlier in New Orleans. It showed federal marshals escorting a little girl named Ruby Bridges to an otherwise all white elementary school, protecting her from a mob that wanted to block school integration. He titled the painting “The Problem We All Live With.” It’s a moving work that portrays segregation and prejudice, a far cry from the sentimental scenes of Americana that first brought him fame.
Years ago, Stephen Heyde, the former Conductor and Music Director of the Waco Symphony Orchestra, told me that “art has the power to be the conscience of a society.” And this is what Rockwell sought to create. By the 60s, the emotions he sought to convey in this art were ones rooted in society’s problems and injustices.
If you can imagine how incensed people would be if Rockwell’s piece were removed from an exhibit so no one would be offended by it, you can begin to understand some of the more recent controversies. Art is stronger than mere words. Art can vividly distill complexities that we sometimes would prefer to skim over. Many artists believe their works are, in a way, supposed to offend people because that is what inevitably happens when injustice is illuminated by art.
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