News Art Blog

We all dream of mastering a skill like a pro—to skate like an Olympian, sing like an Idol, or go to the hoop “like Mike.” What if we could learn to see how an artist sees? “It’s so important to move through the world with this kind of wonder,” artist Bo Bartlett says of putting on an artist’s eyes in SEE: An Art Road Trip. “It all passes so fast.” Directed by Bartlett with his wife and fellow artist Betsy Eby and filmmaker Glenn Holsten, SEE challenges and inspires us to see the world through an artist’s eyes not necessarily in hopes of making art but, more importantly, in hopes of our appreciating the beauty that rushes past us and our high-speed everyday lives. Part road trip, part art history lesson, and part existential drama, SEE at all times conveys a vision of a more aware, more visually activated life that most of us only dream of but can finally experience, if only fleetingly, through these pros’ eyes. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Can We Learn to See How Artists See?"

Any biographer writing about a familiar subject faces the same towering problem—how do I make this person seem new and modern? When writing about an artist such as Norman Rockwell, whose art acts for many as a visual time capsule of early and mid-20^th century Americana, that issue becomes doubly difficult to surmount.  In American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, author Deborah Solomon re-evaluates not just Rockwell’s work, which has been unjustly dismissed as kitsch for too long, but also Rockwell himself and the motivations hidden in his art. Among those hidden clues to the man she finds in Rockwell’s paintings, Solomon unearths homoeroticism and a fascination with preadolescent boys that puts the artist in a wholly different light. Although Solomon never slaps the label of homosexual or pedophile on Norman Rockwell, she comes awfully darn close. Those innuendos have infuriated Rockwell’s descendants and raised larger questions about the dangers of modern biography. Has Norman Rockwell been outed? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Has Norman Rockwell Been Outed?"

We all love visual shorthand for our lives, whether it’s the Apple logo for technology or a flag for patriotism. Just as Thomas Nast’s version of Santa Claus endures as the quintessential Christmas image, Norman Rockwell’s classic painting of an American family at Thanksgiving (detail shown above, full picture here) has stood for seven decades as the single image most Americans associate with turkey day. But few Americans know the full story behind (or even the title of) Rockwell’s painting—the political and human rights roots of the text Rockwell aimed at illustrating. As we plan to sit down as a nation and give thanks, it’s important to remember what Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving picture’s really about. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving Picture's Really About."

“I’m a storyteller at heart,” Star Wars mastermind George Lucas says at the beginning of his proposal for a new museum to be built on the grounds of San Francisco’s Presidio, “and I understand the power of a visual image to tell a story.” The Lucas Cultural Arts Museum, the proposed name for the museum, “will be a center highlighting populist art from some of the great illustrators of the last 150 years through today’s digital art used to create animated and live-action movies, visual effects, props and sketches.” Many museums offer exhibitions or departments dedicated to this brand of “populist art,” but Lucas’ museum, relying heavily on its founder’s personal collection (and $300 million USD of his money), will explore that art and its influence on an unprecedented scale. A veritable “Death Star” of  public-friendly art, The Lucas Cultural Arts Museum boggles the imagination with possibility. Can you imagine a George Lucas museum? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Can You Imagine a George Lucas Museum?"

[Image: Queen Amidala Gown. Costume Designer: Trisha Biggar. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. TM & © 1999 Lucasfilm Ltd. Image source here.]

You can have your Martha Stewart Thanksgiving(tm) with the Aleppo pepper-rubbed roast turkey if you wish, but give me the good, old-fashioned, Norman Rockwell version any day. Rockwell’s classic painting (detail above, full picture here) of Grandma lugging in the gigantic bird on a platter as the patriarch awaits his carving duties and the surrounding adults and kids drool in anticipation will always be the quintessential image of Thanksgiving to me. And, yet, when Rockwell painted that iconic scene, it was March 1943—months away from Thanksgiving. The painting, titled Freedom from Want belongs to a series of works Rockwell titled the Four Freedoms after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address in which FDR outlined what he saw as the four essential freedoms that all people in the world should enjoy. When you look for the roots of the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving, you won’t find it in the stuffing or the cranberries (and certainly not in an Aleppo pepper rub)—they’re in the simple idea of human, not just American, freedom. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "The Roots of the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving."

[Image: Norman Rockwell. Freedom from Want (detail) from the Four Freedoms series, 1943. (Image source.)]