Sherry Chandler

Thoughts on Democracy

The NYTimes has a report of an art exhibit in at the Wolfsonian museum at Florida International University titled “Thoughts on Democracy” in which artists revisit Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms series:

Sixty artists contributed to the show. But their creations bear little resemblance to the Rockwell paintings, which helped raise $133 million for the war effort in 1943 after the government turned them into posters. There is no folksy man standing up to speak his opinion (exemplifying “Freedom of Speech”), no devout group praying (“Freedom of Worship”) no wholesome family sitting down to a Thanksgiving meal (“Freedom From Want”).

And while the fourth freedom, “Freedom From Fear,” does reappear, the message seems ominous. In Guillermo Kuitca’s rendition of Rockwell’s image of parents putting their small children to bed, the family is surrounded by a sea of blackness. In James Victore’s remake, tears burst from the parents’ eyes as they pull an American flag over a wooden coffin.

What all of this suggests is not just a reinterpretation of Rockwell but a meditation on an American crisis of self-confidence: the sense that trust in American ideals is giving way to fear and uncertainty about how they are exploited

The article is accompanied by a slideshow that I suggest you see.

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