Reimagining Norman Rockwell’s America

In 2012, Hank Willis Thomas saw a poster of Norman Rockwell’s painting

of a family seated around a holiday table, the matriarch presenting a
turkey to her guests. For Mr. Thomas, a 42-year-old black artist raised in
Manhattan, the pale complexions in Mr. Rockwell’s 1943 masterpiece
did little to represent his experience of a diverse America. So he decided
to create a tableau of his own.
Mr. Thomas and the photographer Emily Shur rented a home in Los
Angeles for a weekend in May. There, they shot several images that
harked back to Mr. Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want,” one in a series of
four paintings inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 speech to
Congress celebrating America’s freedom and democratic values.
“The image haunted me because of the world we live in,” the artist said,
referring to today’s divisive political climate. “I wanted to imagine what
it would look like today.”
Mr. Rockwell, who died 40 years ago on Nov. 8, is among America’s most
influential illustrators. And he is experiencing a resurgence this year. The
“Four Freedoms” series is touring the United States in celebration of its
75th anniversary. And The Saturday Evening Post, the literary magazine
that published Mr. Rockwell’s series and many of his other
illustrations, recently announced it was putting its archives online.
But it is the interpretation of the artist’s classic images, perhaps, that has given Mr. Rockwell’s work renewed life. Mr.
Thomas is one of a number of artists who have reimagined “Four Freedoms,” most of them spurred by racial and
political tension that has divided the country.
Among those is Maurice (Pops) Peterson, an artist from Hillsdale, N.Y., about 20 miles from Stockbridge, where the
Norman Rockwell Museum is situated and where Mr. Rockwell had a studio in his later years. Mr. Peterson, 66, was
unnerved by the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a
police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
“We do not all have freedom from fear,” he said in an
interview.
Mr. Peterson used his iPhone in 2015 to create “Freedom From
What?,” a photographic compilation he made based on Mr.
Rockwell’s “Freedom From Fear.” In Mr. Peterson’s
interpretation, a black man holds a newspaper with the words
“I Can’t Breathe,” a reference to Eric Garner, the unarmed
black man from Staten Island who died in 2014 after he was
placed in a chokehold by the police.
“It was then my art became personal,” Mr. Peterson said.
Mr. Rockwell’s portraits of Americana in the 1940s and 1950s
were quite popular, but largely limited to white, Anglo-Saxon
subjects who were friends or acquaintances of the artist. His
“Four Freedoms” series helped boost patriotism in a country
on the brink of war, a visual reminder of American ideals.
During World War II, they were turned into posters to muster
sales of war bonds.
Laurie Norton Moffatt, director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, said, “Rockwell worked for hire and had to address
the norms” of The Saturday Evening Post. Later, in the 1960s, the artist joined Look magazine and depicted civil rights
and poverty. “We saw him progressively move toward more representation,” she said. “But it was an evolution.”
Ms. Moffatt said the museum embraces the work of Mr. Peterson — he has given lectures there — and others because
it wants to connect the ideals in Mr. Rockwell’s paintings to current culture. But it also blunts criticism that Mr.
Rockwell’s work is solely for a white audience. “It is a new way of stimulating the public and bringing him to a young
audience,” Mr. Peterson said.
As part of the “Four Freedoms” tour, the organizers are showing works by contemporary artists inspired by the artist.
Maggie Meiners asked her friends, a gay, married couple, to pose for her recreation of Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom
From Want.” “I want to expand dialogue,” she said.

Mr. Thomas, a founder of For Freedoms, which produces exhibitions, public art and a billboard campaign to spur civic
activism, said he first approached Ms. Shur about creating the photographic series in 2017. […]
A parade of people streamed through the front doors to be photographed for recreations of Mr. Rockwell’s
“Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of Worship.” The actress Rosario Dawson showed up. So, too, did the rapper
Chuck D, a founder of Public Enemy. By the end of the weekend, more than 150 people had been photographed, Mr.
Thomas said. They became the underpinnings for the final photographic compilations.
“All of these people have their own communities,” he said of those
photographed. “Everyone wants to be a good person. The
demonizing of people doesn’t help.”
That’s what led Maggie Meiners, an artist from suburban Chicago, to
create a series of her own. In 2008, she visited the Norman Rockwell
Museum with her husband and was struck by the elderly couple at the
head of the table in “Freedom From Want.” That year, Californians
had voted to overturn an earlier decision of the California Supreme
Court to legalize same-sex marriage.

“Why should the courts get to decide what constitutes a family?” she
said.
The ban on gay marriage was later deemed unconstitutional. And in
2015, Ms. Meiners, 46, recreated the photograph with two married,
gay friends serving their guests.
Ms. Meiners, like Mr. Rockwell, photographs people she knows. In
2017, soon after the inauguration of President Trump, she said, an
American-born Muslim man came to speak at her Christian church. At
the time, Mr. Trump was using anti-Muslim rhetoric to whip up
support for his ban on immigration from mostly Muslim countries. Ms.
Meiners was moved by the speaker’s story.
“I don’t know a lot of Muslims, and that was disconcerting,” she said.
So, she asked him out for coffee. “I said, ‘I feel that the group most targeted is Muslims,’” she said. “I said: ‘I don’t
know any Muslims. I really want people to know who you are.’ We had a good conversation.” She asked him if he and
a group of his friends would be willing to pose for one of her photographs. “He said, ‘Tell me where to meet and I will
bring the people,’” she
said.
One of the women brought
a hijab patterned after the
American flag. Ms. Meiners
said she continued to be in
touch with the man.
“I want to expand
dialogue,” she said. “The
value of art is it can
connect people on all
levels.”
Nov. 21, 2018
By Laura M. Holson

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/arts/norman-rockwell-freedom.html