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Mary McMagicHair

@marymcmagic-hair / marymcmagic-hair.tumblr.com

Jessica. Canadian. 25. Absolute trash for middle-aged otps.

I have never heard of Norman Rockwell. I don’t understand anything about art. But this picture shook me and caused a storm of emotions. It is called Breaking Home Ties, 1954

The boy is going to a Uni and wearing his best outfit; the Uni sticker is on his luggage, even his tie and his socks are the colours of the sticker. He is excited and impatient. The father - obviously a farmer, is sitting at the worn farm truck with a flag and a storm lamp, because their place is so small the train won’t normally stop there, so the father will need to “catch” the train and signal with the light and the flag for it to stop.

His son will never come back to the farm.  

I think I understand why this picture sold at 15,4 million dollars in 2006. 

Great paintings by Norman Rockwell of everyday Americana.

Norman Rockwell specialized in exactly this, OP. You can look at almost all of his paintings and find a story in it. Some are sweet, some are poignant, some just show family. They are all stories, and they all have story woven into every single detail.

And because it is my favorite, this is “Shiner”

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Rockwell’s mentor was A.C. Leyendecker best known for his illustrations of the Arrow Collar shirt man. The model was Leyendecker’s lover. Rockwell was a pallbearer at Leyendecker’s funeral.

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Rockwell’s paintings also dealt quite a bit with social issues as he got older and after the Saturday Evening Post made him remove a Black person from an image bc Black people “could only depicted in service jobs”.

As a result he left the Post & created (among other works) The Problem We All Live With and Murder in Mississippi.

You look around this hospital, you see the doctors. All men, swaggering in and out of the rooms really fast. "I'm important. I have a pen in my pocket. I look at a chart. Hmm, good chart. I sign the chart. I am God, and God can't hang around. God has to be in the gallbladder wing in five." But spend a few days in the hospital, and you start to notice the nurses. The nurses never rush out of your room. They just clean out the bedpans, draw the blood, insert the suppositories. They don't get to sign a chart. They don't even get a pen. But they hold you while you cry. So, what does this mean? Are women more important than God? What if we discover one day that we were always the ones in charge? Just, no one told us.

THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL | How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?