I've been trying to figure out what it is that I don't like about Rockwell. (Is it just that I feel I'm
supposed not to like him? I looked him up and apparently the consensus has changed on him now and he's as likely to be bigged up by art critics as slagged off.)
I think there's something I don't like about the level of finish on Rockwell's paintings, a sort of photographic, almost hyperreal lucidity that (additionally) chimes weirdly, or horribly, with the cartoony expressions and the jokey situations. (And reminds me of many vintage book/movie covers and posters, I wonder if it's the material they used to produce work so fast?)
He falls between two stools — Daumier depicts cartoon people in 'telling' situations for satiric purposes, but his figures are properly cartoony, so it feels all of a piece
somebody like Velasquez (who i think of cos Rockwell is similarly good at capturing skin, fabric, facial expressions etc.) doesn't have his very realistic looking figures gurning and tottering around... But of course he wasn't a comic artist.
It's an uncanny valley. Not subtle enough and not cartoonish enough.
But again, that might be a way around working out why i don't like the hyper-detailed
look of the Rockwells.
He's obviously incredibly talented, as is the other guy who draws nude women fighting snakes etc. And that brings up all sorts of interesting questions in my mind about why being incredibly talented isn't enough to be a high artist. Is being a high artist about something formal/material, or is it simply about sticking to the subject matter that's traditionally deemed 'high'?