First anti Rockwell salvo

The first shot at the guaranteed to be a very popular mega museum exhibition of Norman Rockwell's artwork in the collection of two very successful, and very progressive major contributors to the Democratic party have been fired.

When I announced the coming Rockwell exhibition opening at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on July 2, 2010 I wrote:

Now for some easy predictions: the high brow elitist critics will all unite in one front and all hate this show. The public, being far more progressive and democratic in their acceptance of what is art (without silly obsolete notions of "high" art and all other art, and without ingrained notions of "illustration" versus "high art") will line out to see the exhibition and continue to love Rockwell as they have for decades.

Boom! the first shot came across the bow of the exhibition a few days ago.

Boom! In an otherwise quite good and interesting article on the future of photography, the Washington Post's Oxford-educated (yields an Anglo-centric perspective on the world) Chief Art Critic writes that "It's not that art museums never show "low" painting. The Corcoran has shown Norman Rockwell..." It is the classic and antiquated (and uniquely American traditional view) critical perspective of high art and low art.

Separate everything; label everything, put everything and everyone in a box with a label: high art, low art, fine art, illustration, Hispanics, Latinos, Scots-Irish, Jewish-American, Cuban-American...

And don't let Rockwell get away with it; it's not high art, it's not high art, it's not high art.