You are at the Norman Rockwell museum. Few artists bring to mind the most classic, iconic verve and spirit of the American soul more so than Norman Rockwell. Known far and wide for his Saturday Evening Post covers, charming depictions of small-town American life, stirring political statements depicted simply, in oil and canvas, Norman Rockwell carries within your mind a hallowed, special significance. To his masterpieces such as Rosie the Riveter, you anchor the exceptional American milestones of history, and his career, you feel, is a look at the country you love at its best, even when it is at its worst. The museum itself is singularly charming. To some passerby, it might seem but a simple home, although perhaps an oversized version thereof, and to you, nothing could be a more perfect statement about the man, whom oft said he merely showed the special spaces of mundane life others often overlooked; truly, to have his museum mimic a charming suburban cottage could be no more poignant. The visit to the museum is therefore especially grand to your heart, a massive sigil of American grandiosity, humbly depicted, effortlessly presented. Within, the masterworks of the artist, nearly a thousand of them, are displayed in silence with humble descriptions and historic significance displayed in small index cards nearby. The museum is always busy, you wager, for even on a Tuesday afternoon, when most are busy at work contributing to the American way that Rockwell so proudly depicted, you find that the museum has a crowd. The crowd, it seems to your keen observation, owes no small part of its number to a careening, rowdy class of elementary school children, chaperoned by a charming teacher who is doing his very best to keep their scrambling attention and direct the mob towards the significant pieces he has chosen to describe in detail. You smile, as you step behind the squirming, shifting chorus of youths, getting closer to hear his particular observances and descriptions of a rather significant piece: Freedom from Want. The painting is part of a four-piece series Rockwell created to contribute to the War efforts, each depicting one of what he considered to be America’s sacred freedoms, freedoms he wagered were worth defending. The particular piece, you know from your amateur’s expertise, depicts a family at a setting familiar to most middle class Americans; a holiday dinner. Calmly and reverently, a family Matriarch sets a massive, sumptuously painted roasted fowl before the family Patriarch, while each individual seated is depicted with various degrees of anticipation, mirth, or mischievous intent. The teacher is blocking half of the painting, however, and as he steps away to reveal your favorite part of the piece - the charming grin of a ginger-headed youth in the bottom right corner, you feel the small hairs on the nape of your neck rise on end, and cold alarm rings in your inner monologue, warning you of imminent danger. Marcel Marceau is peeking forth from that selfsame corner, the same clever grin and loving oil-pointed depiction in that classic Rockwell style. A sudden rage overtakes you, overriding all fears. You push forward through the whining, complaining mass of children--whom you now note are particularly quiet and dumb with fear--to press your face close to the painting, this masterwork so vandalized within the very museum Rockwell helped build to immortalize his works. There is no mistaking, however, that while the painting has been clearly altered, the style is perfectly Rockwellian, and the title card of the painting has also been fiendishly marked The Freedom from Life. In a whirl, you dash to the other three Freedoms: On the brave, legendary Freedom of Speech the baleful mime stands perched in center canvas, replacing the brave lone speaker of the original, his hands puckishly miming for silence--The Freedom of Silence; the reverent, pious Freedom of Worship finds every face changed, marked with a mime’s paint, and the title altered Freedom of Mimicry; and alas, O! Blasphemy! Freedom from Fear is largely unchanged, save for a subtle difference wherein rather than two parents looking upon their sleeping children, the chilling mockery depicts the fiendish mime standing over a pair of child-sized coffins, looking self-satisfied--the Freedom of Fear, the most omen-laden renaming. No, no this cannot be, you cry out, or start to cry out, but only silence escapes you. All around you the confused faces of the museum’s patrons stare out, subtly marked and colored as if they were somehow...painted. Looking about you, seeing that somehow each patron has been transformed into a flatly, frozen two dimensional painting of themselves forever, you realize too late a grim, eldritch truth; there is only one canvas, and only one brush, and the artist is Marcel Marceau, and his pigment is death. Months later, the museum opens a new exhibit. Normime Rockwell’s The Rockwell Massacre, hotly controversial, remains to this day the most painstakingly depicted painting of a crime scene, cleverly done in a dead artist’s style.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 18:19:59 +0000
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