To begin with I would like to clarify what I mean by homoeroticism in general, and in Rockwell's work in particular. First I would suggest that there are three types of homoerotic art. The first is that found in videos and photographs of the XXX variety; in the art world the photos of Mapplethorpe spring to mind. In such works we assume the creators take sexual pleasure and invite the viewer to share in the experience. Then there is another category, usually described as soft-porn, in which the obvious sexual content is thinly veiled. In films and photographs figures are placed suggestively, even sexually, but the effect is blunted by the addition of clothing and especially softened by the context or situation, which justifies the partial nakedness of the subject matter. Helmut Lang's photos of men come to mind in this context.
And finally, there is the third category, which is the most widespread and yet, the hardest to define. It consists of images where the sexual content is entirely obscured and overwhelmed by the obviously non-sexual or even highly moral content of the subject matter. With such works one frequently has to wonder whether the artist was aware of the sexual aspect of the image to begin with. To further this ambiguity, when such content is pointed to, it is often denied. Consider many religious images, a crucifix for example. Many crucifixes are clearly homoerotic, but the primary message is so important that the nakedness and sensuous nature of the pose are almost never even noticed. It is into this murky category that Norman Rockwell's paintings fall. That is, the homoeroticism is veiled and even justified by the apparent necessity of the pictures' story telling content.
To demonstrate this idea however requires illustration but that is an easy task as Rockwell's homoerotic images are not in the least hard to come by - in fact, if I were to mention them all it would become redundant, so I focus on his Post covers, beginning with the earliest. The homoerotic aspect of his work is immediately apparent in these early covers and continues throughout his long career. Consider eight covers done in succession from June 14 1919 until January 17, 1920 during the first year of his work for the magazine. Of these eight images, seven feature men or boys in either suggestive or revealing poses. Featured in the June 14, 1919 cover, a young man, obviously confused about something, scratches his head and stands awkwardly with one toe on the other and a flower in his lapel. He has pulled back his jacket to reveal his crotch with his anatomy nicely suggested by the folds of his trousers.
Now clearly this is not some obscure detail, as the crotch in question is in the center of the painting. Why does the boy seated in the background laugh at him and the girl tilt her head in a questioning look? Notice that once the original meaning of this image is lost, the real content begins to emerge.
The following week's cover presents a painting of a boy leapfrogging over another boy's back. This is the first example of the male, spread legged pose, which will be repeated over and over again in the next fifty years.
The boy's crotch is here again highlighted by the trousers being dark and the shirt sleeves being white so that the crotch is given its own little sub frame inside of the larger picture. Like the previous example, the figure is pictured centrally, again with the crotch in the center of the painting.
In the following illustration, which was portrayed the week of August 9, 1919, a young boy has lost his clothing and a dog is running off with his pants. He runs after the dog and the figure is depicted with its legs spread apart and once more, the crotch is in the center of the picture.
As a matter of fact you could say that in this series, the crotch of young boys is the subject of the art. The painting for the issue of September 6, 1919 shows a young boy resting from his labors against a tree trunk. Although his crotch would be in the center of the picture, the pose is such that it conceals that part of his anatomy. Our attention is drawn to his genitals nonetheless, by the placement of a hoe's handle right where an erection would be. His face with eyes closed and mouth open further brings the sexual aspect of the pose to mind.
Indeed, the placement of the hoe where the penis would be is an example of phallic symbolism seen here for the first time in Rockwell's Post covers, but one that will be oft repeated and even become a favorite device of the artist. We see it again the following week in fact, with a rather benign image overall of a business man locking up his office to go play golf.
Note however the self satisfied smile on his lips; the key which locks the door and the thumb and fingers that hold it are effectively placed in the man's crotch acting as the required phallic symbol. And why do I say "required"? For such benign images of apparent cliches to work and become ideographs of a lasting nature there would have to be sexual content, narrative and symbolism. Otherwise, image, like life itself, would be lacking in salt.
A boy walking on stilts is seen on the October 4, 1919 cover. He is shown frontally with his legs spread and his crotch - per usual - in the center of the picture.
When looked at in this way, it is amazing how many images clearly have an erotic aspect about them, especially when one considers that it has never been noticed. One cover stands out in my mind as particularly noteworthy however and I sometimes wonder how it came to be published in the first place.
The Post cover for June 4, 1921 features three boys all in a state of semi-nudity. They are running full tilt to the left. The larger central boy is entirely nude; his spread legs fall right in the center of the picture space as always. While his nudity is concealed by his shirt and pants clutched in his hand, the breeze from his running pulls back the edge of his shirt so that as much of his naked upper legs are shown that would be legal.
This center child is depicted as a large enough image so that Rockwell is able to dwell on and develop the more subtle details of the nubile flesh. One can readily see the transparent blue tint in skin that has not been exposed to the sun contrasted with a crimson flush of suntan on the back of the arms. There are freckles across the shoulders and last, but not least, a classic sidelong glance with lips in a pucker and topped off with wet hair. Behind the boys there is a faded, "No Swimming" sign, which offers the explanation for the entire image. Take away the sign and one might consider that the painting was done simply to admire the boy's flesh and caress it with the brush. Or, in a much simpler sense, just to set up the scene, put the naked boys in motion, and take photographs. Many artists have had a signature pose for their figures, immediately recognizable as their creation. For DaVinci it was a figure with an arm extended and a finger pointing to heaven. In that large coffee table book on DaVinci, the one with the sepia tone reproductions, several pages are devoted to a discussion of that pose because it was so "Leonardoesque" that it was often employed in forgeries. With Michelangelo it is the contrapposto, or twisting pose of the male figure, abundantly bestowed with muscles. His poses were so characteristic that they could easily be described as "looking like a twisted bag of walnuts." Rockwell also has a trademark pose, unusual because only he ever used it. He poses a model so that we are looking at the back view. The figure is rather symmetrically set with the butt prominently placed in the center of the composition. If the butt is not in the exact center, at least it is presented as the center of interest in the painting. We might call these works "the butt portrait series." One example should suffice to illustrate just how unique this pose is, but I would like to mention several, given that it is a trademark, Rockwell icon.
First, consider his self portrait for the February 13, 1960 Post cover.
In this illustration we have Norman Rockwell's rear end very carefully and exactly painted in the visual, if not the geometric center of the painting. His rump is placed on a red cushion, and this is no coincidence. Indeed, the red cushion or red upholstery is often employed in the butt portraits. This particular one has several other enigmatic characteristics. Four pictures of other portraits are tacked up on the canvas: self portraits by Rembrandt, Durer, Picasso, and Van Gogh. On the canvas itself, Rockwell's face emerges in gray under painting without glasses. In the mirror however, he wears his glasses and the light glints from the glass so that no detail of the eyes can be seen. There appears to be a sort of hopeless search for the self in the painting, yet only absurdities emerge. What could he have in common with those other artists, or with a Roman war helmet that sits on the top of the easel?
The September 20, 1958 Post cover, which is called "The Runaway" displays a policeman's butt, which is contrasted very interestingly with the young boys'. I can think of no better painting of the male buttocks in the entire history of art than this policeman's posterior.
His figure just borders on being fat, but it is that kind of fat that can so easily pass for muscle. His body strains against the fabric and fills it up in a perfectly convex way. The ornaments call our attention back to this centerpiece, if our eye should happen to stray to other details of the painting such as the glossy highlights on the leather strap and belt and the ribbon that runs along the side of the leg. Now consider the way the fabric of the shirt is pulled so taught against the bulge of muscle in his broad shoulders. The fabric has darts coming up from the waist and down from the shoulders to accommodate his rather natural massiveness. This is a lovingly drawn figure and reminds one of those portraits of horses that young girls are so fond of drawing. I would never suggest that every time Rockwell poses a figure in this way that the image has erotic undertones. As a matter of fact, the sensuous policeman sits next to a young boy who - although posed similarly - presents an image completely devoid of anything erotic or physical. The boy looks up trustingly, but perhaps questioningly at his protector and one feels almost uneasy about the way the man twists toward the child, seeming to loom over him.
Ironically, one of Rockwell's most interesting rectal images does not give the butt central play in the picture. Rather, in the center of the picture is the now-familiar groin image, replete with legs spread but, the butt appears off to the lower left, rather than taking center stage. It is a rear end so perfectly painted however, suggestive of such interesting ideas, that I feel I must include it in this discussion of the butt pictures.
The perfectly-painted butt of which I speak is seen in the May 18, 1940 Post cover illustration titled, "The Full Treatment", A middle aged man with legs spread sits in a barber chair. His groin is in the exact geometric center of the painting, but covered by the barber's cloth. Circling around this central groin, like the planets rotate around the sun, is an assortment of "pleasures" . . .
A Vargas looking female with the requisite cone shaped breasts of that period is preparing to do his nails so he dips his fingers in her little red bowl. In his other hand is a cigar. The barber will cut his hair but first seems to be gently caressing his ears. A black "shoe shine boy" polishes his shoes and here is where we finally see the butt of the picture. A symmetrical butt, which is thrust toward the viewer because he has to be "bent over" to shine the shoes, is seemingly a pose of necessity. That is, the activity seems to require that the butt be portrayed in this suggestive way. So to be quite specific with this piece, the take-away message is that this man will get to enjoy every type of sexual pleasure. He will put his fingers in the woman, the red bowl suggesting her vagina. He will have at his beck and call the black man's rectum and he will be stroked to pleasure by the boy as indicated by the motions of the shoe brush. Lastly, consider the face, which expresses his anticipatory pleasure in these expectations of delight.
But I must stop at this point and address my critics who I can hear in my mind's ear, becoming angrier and angrier. "Those are not groins and rectums we see in these paintings but simply articles of clothing, which would be impossible to leave out in a painting. There is no sex, no homoeroticism in these pictures; it is all just a sick projection of a sick mind! Every word of this travesty suggests that the writer is just some mentally ill person."
I will not come to my own defense; I would rather defend Rockwell himself. My critics assume that Rockwell did not understand the obvious and repeated content and symbolism of his own paintings, that he was some kind of innocent who did not fathom the psychological power in the leitmotifs of his own images. The idea that this artist, one of the most careful observers of the content of human body language that ever lived was not conversant with sexual symbolism, would be like suggesting that Ernest Hemmingway did not know the alphabet. Inundating the viewer with sexual symbolism and the like is the backbone of contemporary media art, image and advertising, of which Rockwell is a founding father; it is one of the ABC's of contemporary media communication. That there are naive people who deny that it exists really just makes it all the more powerful
For the March 4, 1944 Post cover, Rockwell painted "The Tattooist" who sits with his back to us, and as has become commonplace, his butt is in the center of the picture and in fact, is the largest object in the painting. Like the shoe shine boy, he has assumed a pose of necessity as his craft requires him to sit in such a way as to thrust his rear-end out towards us in a slightly bent-over position. Note that the butt in this illustration is elaborated with a circle of adornments. There is the handle of a pair of scissors peaking out of one of the tattooist's pockets and a little book looking out of the other. A towel on either side isolates the portrait and frames it. The belt at the top and the blue cushion at the bottom complete the framing. These added details completely encircle the man's ass and make it into a separate little painting within a painting - much like that same separation seen in his self portrait.
Surprisingly, the most important painting in the butt portrait series does not conform to the usual format. The rear end is not in the center of the picture and instead is pictured in profile. It is a painting of a young boy bending over, taking down his pants so that his naked posterior is exposed. How, you might ask, could Rockwell have painted such a subject? Here is the genius of Rockwell because again, it is a pose of necessity. The boy must take down his paints because he is in the doctors office and he is about to receive a shot, which we see the doctor preparing in the back of the picture space. The picture is titled "Before The Shot" and was painted for the March 15, 1958 cover of Post.
The behavior of the boy in this picture is extraordinarily touching and endearing. He is examining the framed diploma that the doctor has hung on his wall, perhaps wondering if this man is "qualified" to do what he is about to do. Or to put another way, one might say that the boy wants to know if this man has the right to do something to his ass.
In this analysis of Rockwell's work, I have not ventured to speculate on Rockwell's sexuality, and I would never presume to do so. This is not a study of Rockwell's personality or sexuality or physicality, but a study only regarding particular aspects of the content of his paintings. If I were called upon to speculate about his biography however, I would suggest that this great painting may be some sort of a self portrait, in which we glimpse, in metaphor, an indication of something that happened to him as a child, some invasion of his childhood chastity by an adult male, perhaps a Doctor, or a character like the Policeman in the runaway. Whatever the case, I believe that Rockwell may have been violated in some way by someone in authority, and that, like the boy who received the shot, he did not accept the experience and began examining the world in which he lived, looking for clues, leaving no rock unturned in a search of explanations. Such experiences create great artists; Norman Rockwell was one.
Richarde Britell August 12, 2007 Housatonic, MA
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