“The Artist”

THERE MUST HAVE BEEN TIMES when even Norman Rockwell's seemingly bottomless well of invention ran dry, and here he amusingly illustrates just such a situation. The artist is presumably a self-caricature. He is caught at that dreadful moment, faced with a canvas that is terrifyingly blank except for the familiar Post logo. Abandoned sketches have been cast aside, and his palette lies untended on the floor.

Did Rockwell feel, one can't help wondering, that the cover artist's work was taken a little too much for granted? Month after month, year after year, Rockwell and his peers came up with new ideas and fresh variations on old themes, but the efforts involved probably never even occurred to the millions of readers who picked up the Post every week. It's easy to believe that he got a special pleasure out of this particular composition.