Christopher Finch > Quotes

“If Charles Dickens was the literary master of the Christmas story, surely Norman Rockwell holds the equivalent position among illustrators. No one has rung more variations on the theme than he has.”
― Christopher Finch, 102 Favorite Pantings by Norman Rockwell

“That Diirer and Rembrandt are sources of inspiration to Rockwell will come as a surprise to no one, but some people may be a little nonplussed to find the expressionistic work of Van Gogh and the still more radical vision of Picasso sharing space with these more academic masterpieces.
The fact is that, despite the evidence of his work, Rockwell's taste is extremely catholic.”
― Christopher Finch, 102 Favorite Pantings by Norman Rockwell

“Norman Rockwell is a master of the art of illustration, an art that he helped transform as technical advances that occurred during his lifetime brought high-quality color reproduction to the newsstands of the world. It is almost impossible, however, to discuss him simply as an artist and innovator because, by some mysterious chemistry, the images he created have become part of the fabric of our popular culture. He held up a friendly mirror to the society he lived in, and Americans have looked into this glass and seen themselves as warm, decent, hard-working citizens of a country bountiful enough to accommodate their boundless optimism.”
― Christopher Finch, 102 Favorite Pantings by Norman Rockwell

“Rockwell is poking fun at people who set themselves up in judgment of others.”
― Christopher Finch, 102 Favorite Pantings by Norman Rockwell

“When Norman Rockwell was a boy, on the upper West Side of Manhattan, his father was given to reading out loud passages from the works of Charles Dickens after supper while the boy sketched the characters. This early exposure to the great nineteenth-century novelist seems to have had a profound effect on Rockwell's subsequent career. In one sense it is true to say that almost all of Rockwell's work can be seen as an extension of the Dickensian tradition. Rockwell has Dickens' flair for caricature and for inventing colorful and picturesque characters. He has the same gift of creating comedy out of everyday situations.”
― Christopher Finch, 102 Favorite Paintings

“In a century [20th] that has not treated old people kindly, Rockwell, from the very beginning of his career, has always depicted them with great respect, showing them as capable of enjoying life as much as anyone else. Rockwell always stands for continuity.”
― Christopher Finch, 102 Favorite Pantings by Norman Rockwell

“[...] Rockwell is also a profoundly conservative artist — by no stretch of the imagination could he be thought of as aesthetically adventurous. But this does not mean that he has been unresponsive to his times.”
― Christopher Finch, 102 Favorite Pantings by Norman Rockwell