Art, politics and history
July 19 2011
Here's a video of Barack Obama looking at Normal Rockwell's iconic painting, The Problem We All Live With, with its subject, Ruby Bridges. The picture shows Ruby Bridges' first day at school in 1960 in Louisiana, after the Supreme Court had ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional. She is being escorted by guards as tomatoes are thrown at her. Above her is written the word 'n*gger' in graffiti.
The painting is now hanging outside the Oval Office. The White House blog says:
The President likes pictures that tell a story and this painting fits that bill. Norman Rockwell was a longtime supporter of the goals of equality and tolerance. In his early career, editorial policies governed the placement of minorities in his illustrations (restricting them to service industry positions only).
However, in 1963 Rockwell confronted the issue of prejudice head-on with this, one of his most powerful paintings. Inspired by the story of Ruby Bridges and school integration, the image featured a young African-American girl being escorted to school by four U.S. marshals amidst signs of protest and fearful ignorance. The painting ushered in a new era in Rockwell's career and remains an important national symbol of the struggle for racial equality.
In the video Obama describes how much it means to him, the first black President, to have Rockwell's painting by his office in the White House. It's pretty powerful stuff.
It is also, on a purely art historical level, an important moment in the history of 20th Century American painting. I've always struggled to understand why American museums (indeed museums around the world) are so sniffy about Rockwell's work. The same museums that fall over themselves to have a vapid repetition of Jeff Koons' tediously boring souvenir-shop sculptures look with disdain on Rockwell's paintings, which on every conceivable level are more significant artistically, historically and politically. Will the situation will be reversed in fifty years time?
