Im john wetenhall. Here on the campus of George Washington university in the heart of washington, d. C. Norman rockwells four freedoms exhibition is a traveling show, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Norman Rockwell museum, the 75th anniversary of dday, and putting on the wall the images Norman Rockwell created that rockwell painted the created the ideological concepts that president roosevelt in the state of the Union Address in 1941. This is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person who worships god in his own way everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want, translated in the world terms, means economic understanding procured through every nation a healthy peace time life everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom of fear. It means a worldwide reduction of armament. That no nation will be in a position to be in a physical act of aggression against any neighbor anywhere in the world. applause what people forget today is that the concept of four freedoms did not take immediate halt on the national psyche. A few artists made images of freedoms, there was talk of freedoms, but it didnt capture the imagination in any way that people would be excited about until Norman Rockwell. Rockwells four paintings of the four freedoms made understandable and tangible the value of those freedoms and were, arguably, the most prominent and public images, domestic images of world war ii and unified the nation. The exhibition begins with some early rockwell paintings at the time of the new deal. The depression era. Giving a little sense of what america was like prior to world war ii. Then it goes straight into the war years with videos of fdrs four freedoms speech, and other artists trying to encapsulate the art and other images of world war ii, following the introduction of fdrs state of the Union Address in 1941. We look at some of rockwells early war images. Images that were about the common person joining the military and what military life was like. The heart of the exhibition is rockwell trying to wrestle with and then the spread of the images across the united states, first through magazines and then through posters. Ultimately leading towards the end of world war ii. The show culminates with some of rockwells great and lesserknown works that confront civil rights. Reimagine, i think, the values of the nation. Finally, the Rockwell Museum organized some 40 artists work to be shown, work that was done contemporarily today, work by Living Artists to reflect on the values of four freedoms, or a different context of how we might think of them today. Lets begin our tour. I would like to show you some of the earliest images that rockwell made of world war ii. He conceived a character, who is actually a 15yearold boy at the time, too young to enlist. He created a series of images that were a lighthearted look at life in the military. One of his more famous ones is Willie Gillis receiving the care package. He received a box of goodies and made quite a few friends. The friends have lined up looking at this package. It became a lighthearted symbol of the military together, life on the base, training, and this kind of thing. Today, sometimes these images change a little bit subsequent to their publishing on the post. Its important for us to know that these images for rockwell were valuable as photographs. The pictures themselves were not intended for museums used for sale or these kind of things as we think about in the art world. There were images to be photographed and he was paid to photograph the image, the cover, and they gave the painting back to him. After they had been published later on, sometimes the image of the paintings themselves would have been given away or sold to others. This one, im sure, was sold to someone else. If you look at the background and look at the hands, this is a magnificent painting. This is an artist who has a comment of his craft. Can reproduce the imagery in a meticulous manner. His pressure and his reproductive skills were as good as the photographs, sometimes better. If you look back, you see the background gets murky, and all of a sudden a great painter has sprayed a sleeve on his image. Somebody did it to later when they painted the background and took out the lines from the saturday evening post. There are other images. This one was never published. The young recruit, remember he was too young to enlist. Looking starry eyed as these hardened citizens are eating, smoking, sitting around, the veterans of war. It was too harsh a contrast and not published in the saturday evening post. Really one of the better Willie Gillis images, one of the more poignant ones. In a place of worship with military superiors in front and behind. Thinking about what is to come. The painting here was painted by rockwell late in 1944. As an image of people in smalltown america listening to their news, getting their news from the newspaper and the radio in the back. Its a magnificent composition, listening, watching. We know from a sketch that the newspaper was to have on its cover a headline that says war plans for france. There was a potential invasion of france talked about prior to dday on the radio. The figures here are gathering the news, showing the concern of the people at home of the war abroad. This was not a cover and not submitted to the saturday evening post because rockwell considered it too subtle and too hard for people to understand and read. He made a picture about the radio elsewhere in the exhibition. This poster is the only image rockwell painted of actual combat taking place. Rockwell was uncomfortable of the concept of painting war in action. He did this one showing the bullets being spent. It was a poster to rally the factory workers. The munitions plans to excite the people on the homefront to support the war effort. This was an image meant to show that bullets are needed and this fighting figure still with all the details of rockwell, the realistic imagery and all of this, very cleverly covers his face. Norman rockwells quest to paint the four freedoms actually begin and failure. He came to washington, d. C. And presented them at the office of war information. The leadership at the time rejected the idea and sent him away without a commission to paint roosevelts four freedoms. On his trip home, he stopped in philadelphia and met with editors of the saturday evening post, who embraced the idea and instructed rockwell to go home, not to work on other features, but to focus on the four freedoms. He was given four months, it took him seven to conceive and paint the pictures once he began. The First Painting he worked on, the one that gave him the inspiration of the series was freedom of speech. As rockwell recalls, he woke up, he was struggling as rockwell always did, struggling to come up with the concept, the idea of how he would embody an abstract idea such as freedom of speech. He says he woke up one night and recalled a meeting in the town of arlington where he lived at the time, and a debate that took place in arlington about whether or not to rebuild the school that had recently burned down, or whether the children would be bussed to the next district and taxes would be saved. He remembered an incident when his neighbor rose to oppose the idea of building the new school. What he remembered was the rest of the meeting listening respectfully, hearing the point of view and the gentleman lost of the vote, the town voted to enact the tax and to borrow 80,000 to build the new school house. Rockwell made a series of studies afterwards. He started sketching and creating images. We have some of his sketches showing rockwell wrestling with the various ways he could articulate this image, this idea of freedom of speech and what he remembers. Over a series of images he came with the idea of essentially putting a blackboard in the background, a neutral background so that the speaker would stand tall amongst a group of people who are listening, holding the annual report of the town, the agenda of the meeting, the agenda of the taxes. Eyes looking, and ears emphasized because freedom of speech is about the obligation to listen, and respectful listening. Rockwell created this image that showed everyone paying respect and proper attention. That is an image of Norman Rockwell in the far corner, showing his ears and his eyes listening to the speech. Freedom of religion is probably the most difficult image rockwell had to create. How often do people of different religions come together in a place of people were shipped separately in each in their own place of worship. Worship . So rockwell created a composition of humanity together. Of different faiths praying to a common god. Each according to the dictates of his own conscious. Freedom from want, rockwell painted during thanksgiving. There are two family members, his mother and his wife. The rest are neighbors and friends that rockwell posed to create an American Family celebrating thanksgiving. Its really a symphony masterwork of still life. Not the lavish dutch still life you would see. And the figures gathering here, much like the saints would be gathered in a renaissance painting on each side, and the centerpiece gathering you together with kind of a divine light looking in through the windows and beautifully painted draperies that show white against white, against a white tablecloth, against clear glasses, showing kind of a clean and unmessy table, showing americans coming together to celebrate thanksgiving in good cheer and family unity. A concept worth preserving, worth fighting for. Freedom from fear, we have a mother and a father tucking in the two children. The newspaper has bombings, horror, and references, probably the bombings of london, the london blitz of world war ii. If you look around the edges of this kind of scene of serenity and peace, you work around the edges and see the doll, a reference possibly to a body of war and the light in the back, to me, references the orange glow of the firebombing in the back. Its one of the more subtle images that shows the images of horror overseas, references them, and shows the threat to the future generations. The paintings of rockwell were not the images that americans saw. I can show you that americans would have come to learn about rockwells four freedoms through images in the saturday evening post. From february through april, one of rockwells images appeared on a full page spread by a writer of their interpretation of freedom of speech or freedom of worship. Reading from want and freedom from fear. The saturday evening post circulated to millions of people. Americans would have seen these images, much like americans today would have seen images on a television, and would have talked about it in their community. Some of these essays are quite poignant. The freedom of worship, one of the more difficult abstract pictures in the series, has a magnificent essay by the writer will durrant. Man differs from animal, from the animal in two things, he laughs and he prays. The mark of a man as he beats his head against the riddle of life, knows infinite weakness of body and mind, lift up his heart to a hidden presence and power, and finds in his faith, a beacon of heart rendering hope, a pillar of strength for his fragile decency. The essay is wonderful here. If our sons and brothers accomplish this by their toil and suffering, they can carry to all mankind the boon and stimulus of an ordered liberty. It will be in an achievement the size of which those of alexander and napoleon will be a little thing. To that purpose they are offering their youth and their blood. To that purpose who and others regretting we cannot stand beside them, dedicate the remainders of our lives. Americans saw these and in about april of 1943 there was a war bomb drive. They are offering their these images, having been rejected initially, became and braced by the federal war bond drive. The images were adopted as the symbols for the second bond drive. The concept was americans would invest, pay money for a bond that wouldnt mature in a number of years. It was 18 and in 10 years the bond would pay back 25. The idea was they needed the nations to all come together quickly to raise the funds from munitions and to equip the nations soldiers appropriately. Hollywoods most famous movie stars leave the film capital to help the government sell war bonds. Ronald coleman, patty lamarr, all part of a contingent of 50s screen celebrities giving their talents to aid the national war effort. In the second war bond drive, the four freedoms were adopted as images of the bond drive. A Publicity Campaign went to 17 different cities, starting in washington, d. C. Rockwell came to the Department Store in d. C. , and they showed off the posters. They printed in the millions duplicate sets of the four freedoms. A set of four smaller that were given to you when you bought the bondsy in terms of images. Images. The large posters would have been sent around the country in post offices and schools and elsewhere to rally the nation to buy war bonds. The dissemination of this image in 1943, the spring of 1943 was pervasive. It was seen as the face of the war effort at that time. Norman rockwell was trained as an illustrator. He studied in the arts students leagues in new york. Learned the basics of painting and drawing the human body. And mastered his craft essentially, with the skill of being able to recreate in drawings or in paintings as accurately and realistically as a camera might. Although rockwell said in his autobiography that he sometimes looked at the world as a little too messy and not quite as ideal as he would like it to be, therefore he made it more ideal in his paintings. He became extraordinarily well known through his art, first working for the boy scouts, then working for magazines. The great one being the saturday evening post. As an artist who appeared on the cover of the post, millions of people would see his art, far more than an artist who was making paintings for a wealthy patron or a museum. He was a very popular artist and chronicled American Life from the teens through the 20s, 30s, the 40s, up until the early 1970s. Where this exhibition begins is in the 19 early 1930s. There is an image from a saturday evening post cover of returning home from vacation. This is a year after the stock market crashed. Times were bad, it was a market downturn. Rockwell could look at life in a lighthearted way. This is the vacation from which you need a vacation. The family has returned home exhausted. Fraud coming out of the child box. The hastily packed suitcase, the camera, shoes untied, worn out with signs about a wonderful vacation. Its something Many Americans could relate to. Which made the magazine welcoming when the post was delivered. People would see something they would relate to at the time. Next to this picture is another painting of a vacation from 1938. Its quite different. Posters of vacations, exotic ports of paris, mountains, vacations, and now six years into the depression a sales person with no customers. Bored, unsuccessful, this was the vacation in america in the late 1930s as the ravages of the depression, unemployment were spreading throughout the nation. Vacation meant something quite different. Remember the painting i showed you of the gentleman around the lunch counter that were listening to the radio. Following that painting, rockwell painted this, a gentleman listening to the radio by himself in his home trying to hear the news. Thats a more personal image than the gentleman at the lunch counter. Look at his hand trying to dial in. You can imagine the static on the radio trying to get the sound clear. So he can hear the messages coming through the radio. On his lap you can see the father with maps of france and england, a map of europe, the channel with the direction that he understands the military forces to be taking. Up above him, eisenhower and macarthur. Three stars and three photographs from the navy, the army and the air force. Three sons of the man. You see the clues around maps and the like. You realize he is trying to track the progress his sons would be making on the warfront. And you can see in the map behind, american flags have been pinned onto the map. We can only presume these are the locations that he believes his sons are fighting and. Fighting in. The painting was later. Later given away to the editor of the Berkshire Eagle in western massachusetts. What rockwell did his he repainted the newspaper on the ground as the Berkshire Eagle and dedicated it to the staff, to his friend and the staff of the Berkshire Eagle. Another instance that would have been photographed, circulated in magazine form, the actual painting residing with the artist, given away to a friend. Just at the end come as world war ii ended in thanksgiving 1945, rockwell made this image of the returning soldier for the thanks giving issue of the magazine, sitting on the chair that is a little bit too small for him. Probably his boyhood chair. Wearing the civilian shoes, peeling the potatoes as people remember the like. It was meant to be an image of something for which to be truly thankful. Peoples images of Norman Rockwell in the saturday evening post, the americana, even kitsch sometimes, people think about that and dont always know the late paintings of his career after he left the post. In 1961 the post was bought out. There was a change in management and rockwell left and no longer had to conform to the standards and scriptures and expectations of the saturday evening post reader he could work on images he wanted to do. He ended up with the rival to life magazine. Look magazine. In 1964 he made an image that has come to be quite famous. It is called the problem we all live with. It was painted in 1963, reflecting on an incident in 1960. Of ruby bridges, the first little girl who was brought to an allwhite school as new orleans was segregated. The occasion was the 10th anniversary of brown versus the board of education, the Supreme Court case that mandated integration in the schools and declared separate but equal was not sufficient in the united states. However, it was understood that many communities, the foot dragging, the delays, the lack of care was delaying the integration of these schools. Rockwell, troubled by that in the 10th anniversary, looked back, reached back for this image and reimagined it based on photographs, documents, and created his own image that was starkly different in artistic ways from the images you would have seen in the photograph. The photograph shows the marshals, who would have to escort ruby bridges. Bringing them all in the allwhite school bringing them into the allwhite school in this case he has moved the heads of the marshals and only showed them as figures of authority. He has made her elegantly dressed. Rockwell commissioned a resident of his town in massachusetts to make a new dress in white for his model for this image. Notice in her book that she holds, stars in reference to the american flag. Originally in the drawings, and its a vile background of this picture. The vile graffiti here. Its a horrid image. Its a horrid is scene at the time when protesters and angry mobs were at the side of the roads, screaming at the girl as she was going to school at the time. Rockwell was so troubled by this. He had ruby on this side, and she couldnt be in the middle because it was a two page magazine spread. The crease was in the middle. Rockwell decided to move her to the front so that a little girl was leading the marshals, as opposed to the marshals leading the little girl. Ruby bridges still has a foundation and is a trustee of the Norman Rockwell museum. Absolutely new orleans. This painting, i should add, was also brought to the white house, president obama. And had ruby bridges come to the white house, and she showed president obama the image. If it hadnt been for you guys i might not have be here. Just having him say that meant a lot to me. It always has. To be Standing Shoulder to shoulder with history and viewing history as just a onceinalifetime. In 1965, rockwell wanted to reproduce for a magazine the gruesome killing of three students who went to mississippi to enroll voters. They were killed by the clansmen. In his drawings, rockwell focused on the gore and the assailants. In his final image he instead chose to make them in shadow, so you couldnt see the real perpetrators of the crime. You saw them as shadows, as ghouls. And made it people in a ubiquitous manner. Something that would be too easy to attribute to one or two individuals. This is humanitys evil trying to wipe out good. Rockwell was very conflicted about the vietnam war. He was troubled by the news he heard in the 1965, 66, 67. He was commissioned to do some paintings on the marines and decided not to follow through because of his conflict with the war. He came up with this image from 1968 called the right to know. Recognizing the people have the obligation and right to understand the purposes for which the nation goes towards. You see the chair of authority. People of diverse walks of American Life. Young and old, in suits, and Norman Rockwell himself has come to ask. I think and making it plain and not rotating it as something specific as congress with a microphone has made this a more symbolic, more ubiquitous right, rather than and incident. The right to know would probably have been something rockwell would have thought about in the way he would freedom. As people think of rockwell as the typical American Family as he grew more mature and thoughtful, rockwell created a series of paintings and images bringing together diverse people. In this case a study for the united nations. But surrounded by people from the world. All nations brought together in contemplation, expectation, hope, desire that the diverse peoples of the world could come together. We see this theme throughout the last years of his life. All agreeing the common theme that doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Rockwell celebrated the diversity of people and the diversities of cultures. Someone more Global Citizen than we today remember him as. We have carried that team forward beyond his lifetime. The Rockwell Museum put out a call on artists. From around the country, selective works by 40 artists to reflect upon rockwells freedoms. The show ends with these images that people can go by and see modern takes on rockwell. Peterson, who lives near the Rockwell Museum, obviously freedom from fear, except the newspaper has changed to, i cant breathe. We have other images of freedom of speech today. Shouting, accusing, pointing. Information. Fake news. People gathering their news from sources they wish. We have seen in the images that have been submitted by the artists much greater diversity of subject. People, black, white, from diverse cultures, from all creeds, freedom of speech and liberty, and all National Values with religious figures from around the world all human rights and eleanor roosevelt. Coming together. This has been an exhibition extremely popular with guests. Particularly young people, who sometimes see the freedom of expression as expressed in the 1940s as sometimes limiting. Monolithich and now understanding that freedom in America Today is something that is vitally important from important than what perspective one comes from. And bestow the respect on others. You can go through this part of the exhibition and see various themes of different peoples and certain inhibitors of liberties, such as the intrusiveness of electronics and surveillance. Religious figures, the dalai lama, gandhi, all part of the same family. More diverse, more inclusive from the perspective of todays artists and viewers. There are certainly some images of resistance, and a reminder that the nation has fallen short of its ideals. Which will be wrapped in the flag. For the student body, when the galleries are most full, they tend to be here, looking at what contemporary artists are reflecting upon. Perhaps seeing themselves in these images and identifying themselves amongst the various competing positions of these vital issues today. I found this has been an exhibition that has brought great diversity from all walks of life throughout the washington, d. C. Community. Most of all students and graduate students here. I have written a book on the iwo jima monument. I knew rockwells art, but i knew how skillful he was as an artist. I knew his ability to recreate the visual was extraordinary. Most artists alive as great as most artists alive or have ever lived, perhaps. When you see him wrestling with the serious issues of freedom, when he had to get away from the softer side of American Life as seen in family magazine and saturday evening post, instead look at the struggles of the nation and the perils of the world, he became much more serious and was an artist of much more depth and thought then i thought. From 1961 on, rockwell was a person of profound thought living up to its values and found that sometimes the nation fell short. He had the courage to look at segregation and housing. But also hope that religions of the world coming together. If he was an artist who reflected with some thoughtfulness and profundity on the american condition. A lot of times people talk about art, not just being an image but a mirror. Rockwell was a mirror on the american psyche. And during ideals, rockwell, roosevelt and the four freedoms is a traveling exhibit with stops in houston, denver, and september 2020 to january 2021 in the Norman Rockwell museum in massachusetts. You can watch this and other American History tv programs on cspan. Org history. , Boston University teacher in silver spoke about president lincolns influence on new deal americans in the 1930s. The Abraham Lincoln institute and fort society hosted a symposium to highlight the 16th president s life, career
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