Norman Rockwell at the Brooklyn Museum

Beloved and dismissed in equal measure, Norman Rockwell gave America the images it wanted --- the images it needed, some might say --- at exactly the moment when the art establishment rejected everything his paintings stood for. Rockwell has thus been left in a critical lurch, as museums often don't know what to do with his paintings or how to fit him into the story of twentieth-century art. 

Rather than shunt him to a corner or deliver patronizing paeans to his "vernacular" style, as so often happens, the Brooklyn Museum takes the bold step of seriously examining Rockwell's process, in particular the preparatory photographs he used to compose his paintings. Behind the Camera reveals the depth of Rockwell's commitment to realism and his astonishing ability to create a single unified image out of slivers of dozens and dozens of photographs. Naturally, the differences between the photos and the final paintings --- a woman's hips become curvier, an expression more sanguine, a background less cluttered --- attracts the most interest, and rightly so: it's rare to see such a fertile imagination hammering away.

Photo: thanks