In a small sitting room, I am the guest of the town arbitrator. I cross my legs and settle back on a comfortable burgundy settee. Hereafter the old woman will be referred to as the matriarch and she is quite at home with the moniker for to be the arbitrator is merely a titled position and to fully round out the circle, her age and title combine to make of her the matriarch and this is as it should be and probably always will in the cycle and mores of all small towns with there houses that settle and creak with authority into the proverbial good, good earth.

The Painter Norman Rockwell captured this similitude of horror and each of his works is a master stroke of banality though, that was not his intent, which of course makes his efforts that more interestingly delusional and his pursuit of capturing Small America he was and is eclipsed by Mr. Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” and so Rockwell’s works are best consigned to the antiquated American woodshed. Suffice it to say that I must expend too much type and effort in critiquing this artiste, when in fact he is a mere analogous referencing to a homogenous heartland.

The denizens claim him as their own when in fact this entire nation of villages, burghs and townships are equally unflattering as portrayed in monotone flat-scapes by Rockwell and where is the seed of originality or inspiration in such a repetitive rendering of America’s small towns such as train stations that are stationary, the locomotive in the foreground is meant to pose not to move and too his caricature of characters, who as a lot seem to know they are being painted, and live that moment only for the brushstroke and rather uniformly they are attired whether it be a military uniform, business suit or to go full circle the uniform of a filling station attendant all are drawn from the same pattern and this haberdasher N.R. makes his cut and fit decidedly unshaped or mostly off the rack as they say and what one character wears in one painting the very same ensemble is found on another in the next canvas with the slight variation of the color of the clothes.

This transparent technique passes muster and is accepted wholeheartedly by the terrible masses who are down to a one are equally paraded for what passes for slice of life America homage. The colors are changed and are equally devoid of animation only it is less tangible than his depicted prop train and so to the last Norman Rockwell is, was and remains a thoroughly nominal artist in the best light. I use the word artist in a bewildering manner as that is how I feel when the very many legions across this nation attest to his artistry. It really is a small matter, a dickering affair for when this overrated illustrator is himself physically taken to the woodshed and buried beneath it what he has left for us in his work is the anti- nuance which is worse than any Anti-Christ and a mass market calendar art with its down home hokey so called realism.