who are you going to believe -- me or your lying eyes

The Connoiseur, by Norman Rockwell

My favorite abstract expressionist painting was by Norman Rockwell for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. While considering another topic I googled it and it was much as I had remembered, but the commentary added an interpretation I didn’t really see. What I see is a republican business-type standing nose close trying to fathom the unfathomable. It’s a joke about abstract art. That’s what I thought first time I saw it and it still looks that way, maybe more so. Good for Norman.

That’s not what the commentary underneath says. It suggests the rigid character with hat, umbrella, and gloves is a stand-in for the artist himself, and that’s bald-faced absurd. He appeared in his own artwork often enough to see how he portrayed himself and it isn’t him. Not just that, but from behind this scholar imagines stand-in Norman to be smiling at this work of genius. I know it’s a lie but I’m never sure if it’s intentional or simply the ‘cult’ in culture, the mysterious ‘art-historical’ ability to see what isn’t there. He says,””Always fascinated by modern and abstract art, Rockwell designed a cover in which he could acknowledge his appreciation of the genre. In 1961, Rockwell's studio was temporarily transformed into an abstract expressionist's workplace as he painted The Connoisseur, a painting about the relationship between conventional and modern art. By placing his back to us, he leaves the interpretation of the museum visitor's reaction to the viewer. If we can assume that he is a surrogate for Rockwell, we may also assume that the gentleman is smiling approvingly.”

This isn’t revisionism. It’s in your face lying, we have eyes, and it’s been the tenor of art scholarship for six or seven decades. It’s the history of art for the gullible among us and, of course, the art professionals who choose to believe what they’re told instead of what they see. Norman made if very clear what he thought of “modern and abstract art” by the way he painted throughout.

http://www.nrm.org/thinglink/text/Connoisseur.html