By David DArcy
Imprinted: Illustrating Race and Kadir Nelsons In Our Lifetime: Paintings from the Pandemic at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, through October 30.
Norman Rockwell was troubled about race relations in American society, and he let his public know that.
Sometimes that meant simply depicting more than one race, which led to misgivings at his mainstay, The Saturday Evening Post. The magazine was wary of printing the 1961 cover, The Golden Rule, which showed a global range of faces. The publications policy, Rockwell said in a later interview, was to depict African-Americans only in servile roles.
Leaving the Saturday Evening Post after 47 years, Rockwell painted scenes for Look magazine covers that dealt with a country forced to live up to its principles. A memorable image from 1964 was of a six-year-old Black girl in a white dress, Ruby Bridges, being escorted to the school in New Orleans that she was integrating in 1960 by four massive US marshals so large that they extend beyond Rockwells frame. Rockwells caption was The Problem We All Live With.
In a wrenching scene that Rockwell painted for Look in 1965, Murder in Mississippi, a young white man holds a wounded Black man while another white man lies motionless on the ground. Shadows of armed figures extend over the picture from the right. The murder victims were Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. They had been registering Black voters in Philadelphia, Mississippi. (The killings loosely inspired the 1988 film Mississippi Burning).
The exhibition Imprinted: Illustrating Race, 150 works and objects at the Norman Rockwell Museum, explores a vast subject, the politics of race in popular American print culture. The presentation is more of a sampling than a systematic survey, more history than art. A selection of work by African-American illustrators, many unseen by the white readership, is counterpoised to the demeaning treatment of race in the illustrated press.
Visitors will find some familiar names Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Charles White, and Faith Ringgold. There are also contributions from artists whom many wont know. The show tracks the evolution away from degrading caricatures of Black Americans and the rise of new images made by African-Americans themselves.
Dont expect a place known as a family museum to display the harshest extremes of printed racism. Or to show the most extreme African-American responses. Yet there are some surprises here.
Looking over the museums website will help prepare visitors for the range of images. So will an exhibition in the same galleries, In Our Lifetime: Paintings from the Pandemic, of work by the painter and illustrator Kadir Nelson (b.1974).
Nelsons 2020 painting After the Storm, is a near-literal updating of the ensemble of faces from multiple races and origins that Rockwell assembled in The Golden Rule. It could be that his 2020 portrait of George Floyd, Say Their Names, a painted memorial to victims of police killings, is a grim commentary on Rockwells image. composed of what looks to be a group of victims of bodies. Rockwells ensemble of faces from throughout the world (and the US) suggested a community, or the makings of one. In Nelsons Say Their Names, a New Yorker cover of June 2020, the faces fill a mass grave
In Imprinted, bookended by works by Rockwell and Nelson, we see illustrations from an advertising campaign from the early 1900s in which stories and images of compliant Black servants were used to sell products to children. The product was Cream of Wheat, a cereal that a small firm introduced to the market in 1893. Unknown then in American homes, Cream of White was manufactured in Grand Forks, North Dakota. To sell the cereal to children, or to their parents, its managers devised a magazine campaign of images showing carefree kids attended by a Black cook holding what else? a bowl of Cream of Wheat. The standard Cream of Wheat picture was of mischievous blonde children calmed by that Black man with a white bowl.
The catalogue essay by Michele E. Bogart reads like a case history in sales promotion. Pale in color, Cream of White didnt look like much. A company executive (marketer was not a word used back then) came up with the idea of creating dramatic scenes of the cereal served to children (all white) by a Black man dressed as a chef. The effect that the company was seeking and selling was meant to be soothing and reassuring. In the ads, the chef was named Rastus, a name long associated with Black slaves and servants. A man named Frank White was used as the model for those pictures. In her essay, Bogart quotes the executive in charge of the decades-long campaign. He says that White was paid a few dollars about five dollars, other writers say. White then disappeared, Bogart writes. The campaign that sold the cereal with his face went on for decades.
Hiring some of the leading artists/illustrators of the time, Cream of Wheat exploited longstanding notions of a deferential, dutiful, gentle icon of otherness, in parallel with Aunt Jemima, launched around the same time in St. Joseph, Missouri.
Every marketing campaign needs to regenerate itself with fresh approaches, so Cream of Wheat turned to producing posters in a style that artists (fine artists) made in the early 1900s. In one scene, the children view a framed portrait of Rastus exhibited in an art museum. If the children that piled over each other in front of the portrait werent ready for art, the picture suggests, at least they were ready, via Rastus, for the nutritious (and civilizing?) appeal of Cream of Wheat.
Bogart notes that there are holes in the archival evidence that might tell us more about Cream of Wheats illustrated campaign. But the seductive sentimental gauziness of the images, which fill far more space than text in the posters, says a lot. They suggest that the pictures targeted children who would demand that their parents buy the cereal a winning strategy for any marketer.
The presence of art in the illustrations sacralize the product, Bogart argues. The presence of a loyal servant assures young children that they will be well fed and safe. Cream of Wheat did not retire Rastus until 2020, around the same time that Quaker Oats abandoned the branded character of Aunt Jemima also around the time that George Floyd was killed.
In Imprinted, a show curated by women, with catalogue essays written by women, there is also a rare focus on often-neglected Black women illustrators. One is Jackie Ormes (1911-85), whose plucky and witty characters (some looking a lot like self-portraits) were the protagonists of her work for close to twenty years.
First working out of Pittsburgh, Ormes created the character of Torchy Brown, a stylish adventurer who fought off villains and abusers. In this comic strip for the Pittsburgh Courier which, syndicated through other African-American newspapers, reached more than a million Black readers, Torchys political consciousness transcended the parameters of the funny pages. Ormes also drew eye-catching clothes for Torchy, which may have attracted more readers.
The strip, given that added fashion dimension, might have reached an even broader audience if major newspapers agreed to carry it.But, like so much else at the time, readership was segregated.
Ormess political edge was part of all the work that she did. So was her surprisingly forward-thinking interest in environmental justice, which barely figured at that time in American media. In her strip Heartbeats, an African-American nurse (also named Torchy) works with a Black doctor to treat patients threatened by toxic factory pollution in the American South. Bear in mind that these comics were published before the Civil Rights movement drew much attention from the mainstream press.
In 1945, Ormes began Patty-Jo n Ginger, a series of panel drawings, single drawings with captions. where the characters were Ginger, a stylish young woman, and her precociously irreverent five-year-old sister. Subjects ranged from wartime victory gardens (tended by the older fashionable Ginger in high heels and a short skirt) and a Halloween scene with a reference to witch hunts. Ormes was suspected of spreading un-American views and investigated for it. One look at the poverty of a Black family in a squalid room was too stiff a reminder of reality for any mainstream publication. That family wondered out loud how the H-bomb protected poor people like themselves.
The catalogue essay by Nancy Goldstein (who is also Ormess biographer) refers to a racially charged joke in a scene from 1955: Patty-Jo, speaking to Ginger, who hides a newspaper with shocking cover photos of murdered Emmett Till behind her back, says, I dont want to seem touchy on the subjectbut that new little white tea kettle just whistled at me. Mocking a white womans justification for Tills death in a comic strip? How many mainstream publications would have imagined running a cartoon like that at the time?
As investigators sought to intimidate her, Ormes was also entrepreneurial, developing a doll inspired by the wise-cracking Patty-Jo that was produced between 1947 and 1949. The artists life story cries out for a documentary or a scripted dramatization.
If Ormes knew how to weaponize humor, Emory Douglas weaponized anger, even though his cartoonish style could, like Ormess, just as easily convey warmth and laughs.
Douglas, who studied commercial art at City College of San Francisco, joined the Black Panther Party (BPP) in 1967. He took the title of Revolutionary Artist. He would later become the BPPs Minister of Culture. He was the art director, designer and principal illustrator for The Black Panther newspaper until it ceased publication in 1980. If his work had a dominant theme those days, it was self-defense, often in the form of a Black figure, usually a woman, with a rifle in her hand. His captions spat out an attitude, as in the defiant panel from 1971, Listen to Them Pigs Banging on My Door for Some Rent MoneyThey Should Be Paying My Rent. Another work on view by Douglas is a drawing of a Black man with a rifle and what looks like a broken chain on his wrist, 1970s Now the Pigs Will Say I Am a Criminal.
Tough words for the walls of the Norman Rockwell Museum.
For The Black Panther, Douglass audience, reaching up to 140,000 in 1970, was still mostly segregated (or self-selected) by race. The artists characters tended to be seen holding guns (although there is an occasional woman holding a rat). The depictions of armed citizens, African-Americans asserting their Second Amendment rights, alarmed authorities in California, who hesitated on gun rights when the arms were held by Blacks.
Douglass later work, sometimes less confrontational, includes a 1993 portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. which is on the cover of the Imprinted catalogue. King is shown with arms folded, against an array of yellow spokes on a red background. Its hard to tell what Douglas was suggesting with that composition, though The Black Panther was far to the political left of King.
In the YouTube video below Douglas talks about his decades as an illustrator and publisher. He doesnt sound as if hes softened much.
Among the artists in Imprinted, Douglas has seen his reputation revived, with the publication of a 2014 book on his career and the inclusion of his work in museum exhibitions. His illustrations are unabashedly polemical: these are not the usual kind of pictures found at the Norman Rockwell Museum.
All the more reason for Imprinted and its broad range of images. There are drawings by African-American illustrators that shed new light on the Harlem Renaissance. There are also personal pictures by artists working today, such as Noa Denmon, Andrea Pippins, Rachelle Baker, and Loveis Wise, that veer away from anything explicitly political.
Can we expect future Rockwell museum exhibitions on illustrating delicate subjects like gender or religion?
David DArcy lives in New York. For years, he was a programmer for the Haifa International Film Festival in Israel. He writes about art for many publications, including the Art Newspaper. He produced and co-wrote the documentary Portrait of Wally (2012), about the fight over a Nazi-looted painting found at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
See the article here:
Visual Arts Review: Illustrations of Race at The Norman Rockwell Museum - artsfuse.org
- This Is My New Golden Rule for Renting Vacation Homes (I Was Doing It All Wrong) - Yahoo Life - April 12th, 2024 [April 12th, 2024]
- Misguided culture warriors should heed the golden rule [column] - LNP | LancasterOnline - April 12th, 2024 [April 12th, 2024]
- Michael L. Fischler: Anger and The Golden Rule - The Union Leader - April 10th, 2024 [April 10th, 2024]
- Dog trainer reveals her golden rule for recall training (we can't believe how simple it is!) - Yahoo Life - April 10th, 2024 [April 10th, 2024]
- Fr. Aristides Palaynes and the Golden Rule Community - Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America - Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America - April 10th, 2024 [April 10th, 2024]
- How Lulu still looks fabulous at 75, from her skincare 'golden rule' to refusing to take lifts - as star revea - Daily Mail - April 10th, 2024 [April 10th, 2024]
- Ken Henry: We are breaking the 'golden rule' of economic policy - ABC News - April 10th, 2024 [April 10th, 2024]
- The Golden Rule and the Free Market - Foundation for Economic Education - March 6th, 2024 [March 6th, 2024]
- Courtney B. Vance and Angela Bassett share their golden rule for successful parenting - The Times of India - March 6th, 2024 [March 6th, 2024]
- Live music at The Golden Rule Coffee House on Friday, March 8 - Redwood Falls Gazette - February 29th, 2024 [February 29th, 2024]
- Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds have always followed one relationship rule - Marie Claire UK - February 29th, 2024 [February 29th, 2024]
- The Golden Rule - A Way of Life - County 10 News - January 27th, 2024 [January 27th, 2024]
- Dear Annie: Nurses Golden Rule might be the answer to relationship problems - MLive.com - January 27th, 2024 [January 27th, 2024]
- Aitana's golden rule and the pending account she has with her most loyal audience - WECB - January 27th, 2024 [January 27th, 2024]
- Guest columnist David Hernndez: Climate, refugees, and the golden rule - GazetteNET - January 27th, 2024 [January 27th, 2024]
- A golden rule that should have been followed in North - The Sun Chronicle - January 27th, 2024 [January 27th, 2024]
- The Golden Rule Refined | | news-journal.com - Longview News-Journal - January 27th, 2024 [January 27th, 2024]
- Film About The Golden Rule Released in Bali - EIN News - January 27th, 2024 [January 27th, 2024]
- Heres a Golden Rule Jeff Bezos Seems to Have Forgotten: Never Let Your Ego Get in the Way of Doing Business - The Good Men Project - January 27th, 2024 [January 27th, 2024]
- Universalists to consider the mandate of the Golden Rule - Ashland Daily Press - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- 6-Year-Old Boy Dies a Month After Adult Neighbor Allegedly Beats ... - PEOPLE - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- COLUMN: Celebrate Thanksgiving year-round with 'Thanks-living ... - Andalusia Star-News - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- Silence is craven, not golden - The Gazette - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- Sellars CEO Named to Wisconsin 'Titan 100' - Industrial Distribution - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- The most valuable decluttering lessons I have learned | - Homes & Gardens - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- COMMENTARY| Bethel: Too much hate | Opinion ... - Bennington Banner - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- Cooking with Love Nello's Continues Impress Diners - St. Albert Gazette - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- What Happened to James Garner? Inside the 'Maverick' Star's ... - Yahoo Entertainment - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- Successful trial of coating that converts UV into PAR boosts sales - hortidaily.com - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- Debt rules will affect the most vulnerable, EU trade union chief warns - EURACTIV - November 20th, 2023 [November 20th, 2023]
- Guest Opinion | Bill Paparian: Pasadena City Hall Believes in the ... - Pasadena Now - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Golden ratio in venation patterns of dragonfly wings | Scientific Reports - Nature.com - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- The Golden Rule Of Data Gathering And New Expectations Of Value ... - The Drum - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Glass gets away with breaking the golden rule - The Irish News - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Red Horse Recruiter Ranks First in Class - 125fw.ang.af.mil - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- These 19 Birmingham BBQ joints are the ultimate Memorial Day ... - Bham Now - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Mountain West Technologies wins Casper Area Chamber of ... - Cap City News - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- The Unseen Engine of South Florida's Booming Vacation Rental Market: Estaga - Yahoo Finance - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Simon Cowell to break important BGT rule this weekend, ITV confirms - South Wales Argus - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Starting out on the St. Croix: What High School Skiing Taught Jessie ... - fasterskier.com - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- These are the weirdest and least understood pickleball rules and ... - msnNOW - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Media Source Not Showing in OBS? Here's How to Fix It - MUO - MakeUseOf - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Youngkin avoids talk of diversity, politics at VMI graduation - Cardinal News - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Mother's Day roots: the opposition to war | READER COMMENTARY - Baltimore Sun - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Rep. Gallagher says US needs to take off 'golden blindfolds' and 'open our eyes' to China risk - Fox News - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Open Heaven 18 May 2023: The Gift of Love - ELANHUB MEDIA - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- 10 Best Quotes About Family In The Fast & Furious Franchise - CBR - Comic Book Resources - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Life in the Fast Lane - New DOE Rule Changes Push LNG Projects ... - RBN Energy - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Dont Say That Word- Days After Golden Advice From Wrexhams Ryan Reynolds, NFL Icon JJ Watt Reminds Wife of Unspoken Rule After Burnley Investment -... - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- 14 Handy Tricks To Get Better Sleep While Backpacking - The Trek - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Investors overlooking the golden rule as they flock to DIY apps - Stuff - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- 7 money 'rules' you can actually break, according to financial experts - MarketWatch - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Dorsman: MP Motorsport betting on caution ahead of inevitable ... - Formula 2 - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Boomer explains why millennials are having a hard time at work: 'It's ... - Upworthy - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- AFA.net - Basic Fairness in Women's Sports - American Family Association - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- How To Prep Air Fryer Vegetables So They Don't Escape The Basket - Tasting Table - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Pansexual Flag: Here's what the Pride Flag's colors mean and more - USA TODAY - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- What is the "Rules-Based-Order"? - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Hudson WWII vet turns 100, decides to quit the bocce ball team - Suncoast News - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Kansas City reportedly let Meta developer break diversity rules, then ... - KCUR - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- From the Right: Drawing the line between trans rights and parental ... - The Malibu Times - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- I was 40,000 in debt but got myself out of it here is the rule I swear by and how it changed my life... - The Sun - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- OBITUARY - Mary Anderson - Berthoud Weekly SurveyorBerthoud ... - BerthoudSurveyor.com - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- 8 ways to improve your written communications - Smartbrief - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Draymond Green: Draymond wont be moved by the Draymond rule - Eurohoops - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Dont Make These 4 Nursing Home Abuse Claim Mistakes in Las ... - Legal Reader - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- What Food to Pack for Family Hikes - Outside - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Lawyer Discernment Is Critical In The World Of AI - JD Supra - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- 12 blockbuster movies for summer 2023 ranked: we can't wait! - What To Watch - April 29th, 2023 [April 29th, 2023]
- Meghan broke 'golden rule' months before royal exit and has done so ever since - Express - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]
- We Are All Connected: Loving One Another in Different Religions - Graphic - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]
- Grammar Girl AP style tips on the Oxford comma, headlines and more - PR Daily - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]
- How to prevent HVAC havoc this summer - KCAU 9 - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]
- Take the right care of your yard | News | hometownnewsbrevard.com - Hometown News - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]
- Britain's Got Talent: Simon Cowell speaks out after new judge Bruno Tonioli breaks rule on first appearance - LADbible - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]
- After experimenting with directives, ISSF reinstates the Tokyo Olympics old-golden rule book for Paris 2024 - Free Press Journal - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]
- Want to stay married? Gogglebox's Steph and Dom reveal golden ... - Daily Mail - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]
- Overcoming Spiritual Violence and Embracing Peace with Rev. Dr ... - Bear World Magazine - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]
- Good News, Part 3 of Resurrection as the Good News | Good News ... - Patheos - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]
- What to Do After an Auto Accident: A Step-by-Step Guide - BBN Times - April 20th, 2023 [April 20th, 2023]