Customer Reviews

Norman Rockwell: 332 Magazine Covers

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

To say that you can spend hours browsing through this wonderful collection is an understatement. This is a book that can be savored over a lifetime.

It shows the progression of Rockwell's art from his early, almost Victorian style covers, to his most famous illustrations, to his political portraits. It always annoys me that people claim he is an illustrator, not an artist. Simply because these pictures tell a story should not detract from their artistic merit.

This volume has them all. From the beautiful, awkward, girl at the Mirror, Doctor's appointment and countless others that are not as well known, but still great! So many of these paintings allow us to learn more about America (Can you get much more American than Norman Rockwell?). His GI- Willie Gillis is truly everyman during WWII. We seem enjoying a hometown newspaper, on leave, with his comrades, and finally as a student on the GI Bill. So many ideas are timeless. The chronicle of a day in the life of a boy or girl seem to embody childhood. Commuters on a platform captures the rise of suburbia. THe one of a son sitting with his father and dog about to leave for college captures that bittersweet moment on the cusp of adolescence.

The sunlit, yet dusty, Marriage Liscense is generally recognized as art, but others should be too. I hope that with the recent Rockwell exhibets a new generation of Americans will appreciate this wodnerful artist who captured so much of our lives!

This is a great addition to any collection- you will never tire of looking through it!

If you can only have one Norman Rockwell book, look no further. This is the quintessential Norman Rockwell. You can spend hours and hours looking at the illustrations and still not fully grasp all the subtle nuances - like the cameo paintings within the painting; the relections in the mirror; the advertisements in the folded newspapers; and so on. I have only found one inconsistency. In "The Clock Mender" some areas in the painting make an abrupt departure from his trademark quasi-realistic style. It reminds me of Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon". Was Rockwell cleverly introducing "Surrealism" into this particular painting, in an inverted Salvador Dali sort of way? Or was the original painting simply damaged and then retouched by someone else? It would make delightful reading if Mr Finch, or anyone else, could offer an explanation.

From Kelvin

This would be a wonderful book for Rockwell's fans BUT the poor quality of the printing and the copies of illustrations made me regret buying it.

It still makes a nice book on the shelf.

Although there are plenty of large prints of his work the quality here is terrible! The colours are washed out and grainy, doing Rockwell a great disservice by not being a true representation of his amazing work, Very disappointed I bought this.

This is not a review of Rockwells work as much as it is about the quality of the book. Its a nice big book , with one cover following the other. the quality of color is a bit sub standard and the descriptions at the end make things a bit hard to flip back and forth. A brilliant collection ofcourse but not as nice as I expected. Tom rockwell's best of Norman Rockwell is smaller but way better print quality. I do recommend this book ofcourse for the genius and technique of a great american master.

This is real art. These covers are traditional Americana as it was or at least should have been in the America Norman Rockwell so loved. Study each of these works and you'll be rewarded with an innumerable collection of tiny "extras" this master hid in his paintings. This is a great gathering of very fine and highly charming visual stories.

So, lets start with the good things about this book: It's thorough. You get a great review of Rockwell's styles as they change through the years. You can almost see exactly when he began using a camera to set up his illustrations. It's a great reference catalogue.

Then there are the bad things: Most notably, while the description talks about "full size format" I actually bought the 'Tiny Folio' edition. Which has 4" square pages - so any real use of the book is thwarted. I bought the small size because Amazon's website confusingly led me to it through the used Marketplace FROM the page of the original sized book! Here I thought I was getting a great deal on a good book...instead I got a novelty item.

That being said, even a full sized book would leave the viewer wanting to see better reproductions (or best of all - the actual painting). Seeing Rockwell's paintings in person is no match for even the best reproductions.

I'm not going to return the book because the error was mine (albeit on a thoroughy confusing website).

Basically this seems like reproductions of the covers of the magazine rather than the paintings themselves. I saw the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the museum a year ago. I was largely unfamiliar with his work and always thought his stuff was kind of cheesy, I mean they were featured on long john silvers cups and plates. Seeing his paintings live made me a eternal fan, I went back 4 times! Naturally I had to have this book and after the first review said it was "the" book to have, done deal. Well I got mine today and when I opened the book I turned my head in horror. The paintings depicted in this book lack the contrast and the correct colors of the original paintings. It's like all the soul and magic was sucked out of the images. It's a big and nice book and maybe I'm spoiled but I'm sure the artist would be pissed seeing his paintings depicted in this manner. Take the image on the cover. This one really stood out to me in the museum. It was painted so brilliantly with smooth buttery strokes and it had the cool shadows to contrast the warm skin tones. It was all lost. Its all wrong. I really wanted this book to be good so badly to feel some of what I felt when I saw these awesome paintings. Sorry, I'm sending mine back.
**NOTE** It does say 332 magazine covers not 332 paintings so I sort of got what I paid for. Perhaps the guy couldn't get access to the originals. There where a bunch of words in the book maybe it said something about that.

This is a tiny book with Rockwell's illustrations. It's about a size of a two-matchboxes.
The pictures and the colors are beautiful, however I wish that the book itself would be a bit bigger to see the details better.

Although some reviewers have criticized the quality of this book's reproductions,I found them to be excellent over all. They are after all magazine covers. This book is a excellent example of Rockwell's art which I find superior to most if not all modern artists. I know his work is not highly rated by those the art world who would consider it too accessible (art industry babble for "It tells a story that most everyone can understand and does not require a wordy "interpretation" by me as to why it's not meaningless trash.) Its timeless portrayal of sometimes over-idealized everyday life of American working people is timeless. Yes. I'm old enough to see myself, my parents, my doctor, my neighbors, and my friends in most every picture. The years may have given these memories a warmer glow than they deserve, but this does not distract from their overall truth.