Norman Rockwell's work has for years been dismissed by art critics and cognoscenti as being egregiously overly sentimental as well as lacking in all of the nuance and ambiguity that are defining elements of high art in the post-Renaissance West. However, while there is certainly some merit in the former charge, a close examination of Rockwell's work reveals not only a high level of artisanship (something that even his critics admit to being present in his work) but also the kind of discerning social and cultural criticism that defines works as art. This paper examines one of his paintings, titled "Missed!", which depicts young boys playing golf and missing a putt, as a way of demonstrating both the artisanship that defined Rockwell's work as well as the way in which his images helped to create a sort of cultural map of many of the significant events and beliefs of American life in the 20th century.
Born in 1894, Rockwell dreamed of becoming an artist from his boyhood, enrolling at the age of 14 in art classes at the New York School of Art, Laridge (2003) describes in her biography of Rockwell. He would leave high school two years later to continue studying art at National Academy of Design, and then go on to the Art Students League, where he honed the technical and commercial skills that would contribute to the lifelong success that he would experience.
Rockwell was not an artist who toiled in obscurity and poverty for decades as many are forced to: He actually made his first professional sale when he was still a teenager and had his first full-time professional job as an artist (serving as art director of the Boy Scouts of America's magazine Boys' Life) before his 20th birthday. But his most significant relationship as an artist was with The Saturday Evening Post. At the age of 22 - in 1916 - Rockwell painted his first cover for the magazine that, over the following half-century, would feature his pain
...