Absurd And Serious

From 1920 to the end of the WW II, American art of illustration reached its pinnacle.A new generation of illustrators arose at that time in the West under the influence of Delaware School(or Brandy Creek School) formed by Howard Pyle, Newell Weise and several other masters of painting. And the most compelling is Norman Rockwell. He often contradicts tradition against modernization, and takes advantage of absurd and humorous metaphor to reflect social issues and the diversity of life. Passion,precision, humor, and absurd seriousness are his style of illustration, and his works are practical and rigorous, and are considered as the record of a boom in American history worth being proud of. Thanks to his love for life, his accurate grasp of the value of people, and the humanism in his works, his works can become truly popular,revealing vividly various aspects of life, and reflecting perfectly the American Dream.Not only an illustrator he is considered, but also a true artist. In addition to his talent,the camera, the slide, the social reform, and the idea transformation – all that of a radical industrialization era contributes to his success. Rockwell has built a past Utopia of "American Dream". Saturday Evening Post of New York has worshipped him as a master with plenty of admiration. Today, these well-known excellent illustrations are still a kind of unique artistic aesthetic providing a new and different vision, playing the role of a textbook for the development of contemporary art of illustrations, and making aesthetic flourish, which shall be the value of research argued in the thesis hereinafter.