I'll have a Rockwell, Durer, and Rhembrandt with a side of Vermeer and van Eyck -- 2001-2002 Cultural Literacy Class Forum

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Date Posted: 14:14:37 03/06/02 Wed
Author: Laura
Subject:

I'll have a Rockwell, Durer, and Rhembrandt with a side of Vermeer and van Eyck

When I was cleaning the dining room this weekend, I got to take a good look at one of the mini-sculptures that my mother has in it. It is a mini-sculpture of the Norman Rockwell painting "Self Portrait." (Here's a link to a good picture of it for reference: <a rel=nofollow target=_blank href="http://www.nrm.org/intro-triple-self-portrait.jpg)">http://www.nrm.org/intro-triple-self-portrait.jpg)</a> Upon closer inspection when I was dusting the piece, I noticed that in the upper, right-hand corner of Rockwell's easel, there are several pieces of artwork, which one assumes he is using as models for his own self portrait. Two of these pictures on the easel are none other than two paintings that we have covered in class: Durer's "Self-Portrait" and Rhembrandt's "Self Portrait." I thought that this was kind of cool.

Then I got to thinking to exactly why the artist might have chosen those self portraits above others. (Sorry, but you know how overboard I go with symbolism.) If you look at how the artist really looks and how he is drawing himself, one can see that he is borrowing the idea that Durer had: portray oneself in a picture as younger than one is at the time the work is being produced. Yet, Rockwell keeps some qualities of the face very true to his present self, as did Rhembrandt, hence why that picture is there.

It also seems to have something that we saw in the Vermeer "Art of Painting" as well: that the leg of the easel are missing for artistic effect as well as the artist actually having his back to the audience. In addition, the artist works the front part of himself into the picture with the use of a mirror, just as Jan van Eyck got himself into "The Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenomi" with the use of a mirror.

Anyway, I thought it was just really cool the way one picture could tie together several different works/artists covered in class. Hope that some of it made sense and that I am not going off the deep end yet again. And if you got this far reading this posts, congratulations! ;-)

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Replies:

Re: I'll have a Rockwell, Durer, and Rhembrandt with a side of Vermeer and van Eyck -- Mr. Fornale, 12:09:08 03/07/02 Thu