Norman Rockwell

August 27, 2001
Claridge (Romantic Potency: The Paradox of Desire) is a former English professor at Annapolis now writing books on "British romanticism, Modernism, gender, and psychoanalytic theory," according to the publisher's bio. This unusual mix is ill-suited to approaching America's most beloved Saturday Evening Post
cover illustrator. From the start, an oblique, brusque writing style fails to spell things out: "Norman Rockwell was not sadistic. He was, however, expert at creating desire, both in his public and in his private life." Chapters like "Urban Tensions, Pastoral Relief" are rife with two-ton sentences, like "Major life changes seemed consistently in Rockwell's purview during this period, including the professional leadership he took for granted," or "In 1935, Rockwell was offered a prestigious commission that reminded him of the historical antecedents that had motivated his love of illustration." Readers are given much detail about each of Rockwell's homes, without any sense of why this information might be useful or revealing. And readers learn that, in 1978, not only did Rockwell die, but "Margaret Mead, Hubert Humphrey, Golda Meir, and Charlie McCarthy" also bit the dust. With an undiscerning and unhelpful bibliography, this book nevertheless scorns reputable art critics like John Canaday, who is compared to "an arrogant graduate student." Yet the author unaccountably praises Rockwell's typically heavy-handed portrait of tolerance that shows "a Jewish man being shaved by a New England Protestant barber, while a black man and a Roman Catholic priest waited their turn." Rockwell's millions of fans and other readers are better off with previous illustrated coffee-table tomes, while those who need convincing will not be won over by minutiae about the artist's senility and other lackluster details in this misbegotten project. 16 pages b&w and color photos.

June 1, 2001
Author of a book on art deco painter Tamara De Lempicka, Claridge goes in the opposite direction to offer what is billed as the first complete biography of Norman Rockwell who proves not to be a cheery slice of Americana.

Copyright 2001 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2001
Spanning three-quarters of the 20th century, Norman Rockwell's illustrations are virtually synonymous with a pure and innocent middle-class America. Claridge (Tamara de Lempicka) here looks at Rockwell in a different light, frequently using his autobiography, Norman Rockwell: My Adventures as an Illustrator (Abrams, 1995), as a point of contrast. Claridge peers beyond the idyllic public image that Rockwell himself helped to perpetuate to find the insecure, impulsive artist underneath. She meticulously charts Rockwell's surprising journey from the frail, skinny child who drew pictures as a way of making friends to the artist whose work millions of Americans looked forward to viewing each week. At a time when scholars are reexamining early 20th-century American illustrators in terms of artistic merit, Claridge illuminates the complexities of Rockwell's paintings, which often go beyond the illustration's purpose. Throughout, she strives to elucidate the inner struggles that shaped Rockwell's decisions. The publishing on Rockwell is extensive, and a few biographies do exist Donald Walton's Rockwell Portrait: An Intimate Biography (o.p.) and Thomas Buechner's Norman Rockwell: Artist and Illustrator (Abradale, 1996. reprint.), originally published eight years before the painter died but this penetrating and eye-opening view of one of America's most popular illustrators is the first to offer some perspective on this popular artist's entire life. Recommended for public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/01.] Kraig Binkowski, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 1, 2001
Rockwell has been both beloved and maligned as the master illustrator of apple-pie Americana, but while his" Saturday Evening Post" covers are universally recognized, the artist himself has been little known, so successful was he in concealing his true nature behind a carefully constructed everyman persona. A recent traveling retrospective exhibit inspired fresh critical appreciation for his technically extraordinary and intellectually sophisticated work 20-odd years after his death, and now Claridge presents the first in-depth biography of this indelible, underrated artist. The portraitist of middlebrow American small-town life, a cozy world of Boy Scouts, baseball, and barbershops, Rockwell grew up in big, bad New York City and was inspired by Rembrandt. Skinny and pigeon-toed, he was the second son in an emotionally fractured household and turned to drawing early on for solace. Given to suppressing emotion and prone to depression, he poured all his energy into his art to the detriment of family life (the stories of his first two marriages are very sad, and his three sons, all artists, tell revealing tales of disaffection), and he suffered ongoing frustration and sorrow over his dismissive critical reception as merely a commercial illustrator. Claridge, also the author of " Tamara De Lem"picka (1999), isn't overwhelmed by the complexities and contradictions of Rockwell's temperament, relationships, and oeuvre but rather is invigorated by them, and her insightful portrait matches Rockwell's paintings in its judicious detail, layers of perception, delight in discovery, and reflections on "the slippery nature of truth in art" and life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)