Rockwell and World War II
From 1916 through his Kennedy Memorial cover on December 16, 1963, Rockwell created 321 magazine covers for The Saturday Evening Post, which was the most popular American magazine of the first half of the 20th century. In a preelectronic era where mass production magazine color illustration was the most popular form of media, Rockwell became a national name, who by the 1950s was rivaled only by Walt Disney for his familiarity to the public among visual artists. Rockwell illustrated American life during World War I and World War II in 34 of his cover illustrations, and he illustrated 33 Post covers during World War II. During much of the first half of the 1940s, Rockwell's cover illustrations focused on the human side of the war.
Rockwell encouraged support for the war efforts during World War II via his covers which endorsed war bonds, encouraged women to work, and encouraged men to enlist in the service. His World War II illustrations used themes of patriotism, longing, shifting gender roles, reunion, love, work, community and family during wartime to promote the war. In his role as a magazine illustrator during times of war, Rockwell draws comparisons to Winslow Homer, an American Civil War illustrator for Harper's Weekly. These four Rockwell artistic expressions were said to have led to the adoption of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms as a goal.
Rockwell made numerous artistic contributions to the war efforts in addition to the Four Freedoms. He is widely known for his idealized fictional wartime characters Willie Gillis and his depiction of Rosie the Riveter and some of his other war art is known by name such as War News and Homecoming Soldier. He was responsible for encouraging individual monetary support of the war through emotional posters like Hasten the Homecoming, 1943.
Read more about this topic: Four Freedoms (Norman Rockwell)
Famous quotes containing the words war ii, world and/or war:
“Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920’s and 1930’s when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother’s keeper.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“The statements of science are hearsay, reports from a world outside the world we know. What the poet tells us has long been known to us all, and forgotten. His knowledge is of our world, the world we are both doomed and privileged to live in, and it is a knowledge of ourselves, of the human condition, the human predicament.”
—John Hall Wheelock (1886–1978)
“My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day’s war with every knave and dolt,
Theater business, management of men.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)