Small town

America, at least the idea of it, lives in the form of

ideals inside our minds.

One sees

houses surrounded by white picket fences, children

playing outside with small dogs named Spot, big family

dinners, and the security of a place where everyone knows

everyone else. Everyone in that perfect vision is a

character, from the policeman to the town veterinarian

and the man who put faces to those characters is Norman

Rockwell.

Rockwell,

one of the century's more famous artists and

illustrators, is making headlines again as a national

museum tour showcasing his amazing amount of work starts

this week at the High Museum in Atlanta. The show will

feature more than 70 of his paintings and all 322 covers

of the Saturday Evening Post, which he illustrated.

Rockwell

started his career at an early age, studying at the Art

Students League and drawing his first cover for the Post

at the age of 22. The major themes in his work were

patriotic and often humorous visions of America and its

citizens.

From 1926

until 1976, Rockwell illustrated the Boy Scouts Calendar,

sticking to the major themes that run through all of his

work. Rockwell also did work for Ladies Home Journal and

Look magazine.

Perhaps

what defines Rockwell best as an artist is his famous

series of posters based on a speech by Franklin Delano

Roosevelt. The paintings are called The Four Freedoms and

they are based on the four principles mentioned by the

president as the country prepared to enter the second

world war. The principles are: freedom of speech and

expression, freedom to worship God in your own way,

everywhere in the world, freedom from want, meaning

economic stability, and freedom from fear, meaning

disarmament.

Rockwell

believed in America and the nation shared and believed in

that vision, too. In some ways they still do.

While

Rockwell's work was enormously popular with the public,

critics scoffed early on. The same things that appealed

to average people: the reverence for everyday events, the

way the pictures resembled photographs, soured critics

until near the end of Rockwell's career. It was only

recently that critical acclaim gravitated toward

Rockwell's work and, as with many great artists, it came

posthumously.

He was

always a successful and popular artist, but he wanted to

be recognized as a great artist by the men and women who

spend their time debating the greatness of artists.

The museum

tour has many museums anxiously awaiting what is sure to

be a major attraction. People who followed Rockwell's

career from the beginning will take in, and be taken in,

nation's consciousness, as will new generations, who will

be seeing that idyllic little burg that resided in

Rockwell's mind's eye for the first time.

The show,

Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People, will

run at the High Museum from Nov. 6 to Jan. 30. Tickets

can be purchased by calling 404-733-5000 or Ticketmaster

at 404-249-6400. There will be lectures, workshops, and

seminars running through the show as well.

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