“Before and After”

ELECTION DAY IS ONE OF THOSE recurring subjects that Rockwell was called on to illustrate again and again. He has given us married couples fighting over their respective candidates and citizens still unsure as to which lever to pull as they enter the voting booth. In 1958 he zeroed in on an actual politician for a change. This man -- apparently a candidate for some local office -- is caught in the moment of defeat, his hopes as dead as the cigar that dangles from his fingers.

Supporters are filing from the room, leaving the candidate alone with these thoughts. Judging from information scribbled on a pad that has fallen to the floor, his state of shock may derive not so much from the fact of defeat as from its magnitude.

Rockwell has painted portraits of several real-life politicians -- from FDR to Richard Nixon -- often giving these portraits a heroic turn. This unheroic representation of an exhausted, imaginary candidate, however, seems truer to Rockwell's vision of the world.