Ep. 70 - Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech" (1943)

We do introduce yourself. I'm your dad, your proud dad. Who are you also? My name is Bernard Avishai and I teach at Dartmouth and write periodically.

So describe what we had going down to the basement on the walls of the house that I grew up in. If I remember correctly, we had the Rockwell paintings, the reproductions of the four freedoms that Roosevelt had spoken about, and obviously Rockwell was very impressed by.

But you don't want me to describe them now, do you? You can describe them. Well, I remember there was this one guy standing, looking very earnest in a very weather-beaten leather jacket, speaking his mind in a local public forum with very wise and face with

lines in it, was very, very touching and moving portrait. I only discovered later what he was defending, but never mind. And then there was a kind of collage of various religions, which always struck me as being very lovely and warm and inviting, but also a little kitschy.

And then there was a woman serving a turkey on Thanksgiving, which I didn't particularly like because it looked like she was holding something much lighter than what she was actually holding. I didn't think a woman of that age could be holding a turkey that was about 80 pounds. Well, just a lot of people to feed.

And I don't remember the fourth one. It was the parents tucking in the kids. That was always my favorite. Oh, yes. Yeah. Well, I should not have forgotten. Yes, it was freedom from fear. So where are you right now? I'm sitting in my office in Jerusalem. And where were you born? I was born in Montreal. So why does this American scene speak to you so much? Well I

became an American. I became an American in 92. I think of America as an ideal. I think Rockwell did too. The ideal of what? The ideal of individual rights, of individual idiosyncrasy,

of tolerance. And as a Jew coming to America particularly, it always felt to me like a place very much worth defending. So Rockwell was a kind of spokesman

for what I cared about. He has such a strong sense of community, Rockwell. He really does. I don't think it's an accident.

He lived in a small town and chose to. He couldn't live anywhere. But he really is in love with small town America. And so am I.

I mean, when I'm in the States, as you know, we live in Wilmot, New Hampshire. I just love being in a small town. Yeah, it remind me.

When is the Wilmot Town Hall open? I always thought it was like, it was like Wednesday afternoons between one and four. that was like the only time you could actually, you know,

address your sewer concerns. No, she's there more now. She? Just one person.

Yeah. Ha ha ha ha. Ms. Lamson, she's wonderful. But you know, we lived in Boston.

Why have those pictures up in our house? Because I believed in the world he was depicting. This was like the beginning of the Reagan administration if I'm not mistaken. And I just love the idea of educating you all on the values of sort of the social democracy

that the New Deal represented. That everyone should be given an opportunity to develop themselves to their full and an acknowledgement that different people are born with different circumstances, you will have that opportunity. And it doesn't matter to whom you were born. Your

your zip code is not your destiny. So a question then for you is that I don't want to spoil for everybody who's about to find out what this man who is representing freedom of speech to Norman Rockwell is actually arguing for. When you found out, did it change at all your appreciation for him being held up

as the gold standard of what it is to fight for what you believe in individually? Not at all in a perverse way. It kind of strengthened it for me because I felt like now I'm sort of celebrating the defense of the speech of someone with whom I disagree. And also, there's a quiet

dignity to his face that I just love. It doesn't really matter. I know many people in New Hampshire who disagree with me. But there's a kind of dignity to small town spaces and a dignity to the way in in which they conduct themselves in a neighborly way. That I really appreciate.

I know that if my car broke down, I'd call him, hey Joe, it'd be like the first person I'd come to call and he'd be there in like 30 seconds. So, I think that's part of why I love that picture.

Thanks, Dad. This is the Lonely Palette, the podcast that returns art history to the masses one object at a time. I'm Tamara Vichai.

Episode 70, Norman Rockwell's Freedom of Speech from 1943. I went to my summer camp for about 14 years total, starting from age 7 until I was all the way to a unit director. And every one of those years, whenever we had hot dogs for lunch, Dick, my beloved camp

director, would pick up the hot dog, make his way over to the ever-present peanut butter and jelly station. This was of course the olden days before peanut butter was, you know, spreadable death for kids. And he would make a big, beautiful show of slathering that PB&J on his dog. Delicious, he'd say, as he made his way from table to table.

I personally could never bring myself to try it. And the camp was always really divided between people gagging on one side and proselytizing on the other. And I like to think of this as my first entree into heated public discourse. People love to have strong opinions and they love to take a side. Whether it's about the condiments they put on their wieners

or pineapple on pizza or hard versus soft taco shells or Taylor Swift or tariffs. We on the internet call it freedom of speech. And so did Norman Rockwell. You'd have to think that if Dick wasn't now in his mid-80s and largely above such things, he'd have the perfect meme to make his statement.

Peanut Butter and Jelly on a Hot Dog is good, actually. The meme in question is, of course, this painting from 1943 by Norman Rockwell, which is actually titled Freedom of Speech, and you've probably seen it everywhere. The chiseled, earnest 1940s manly man sporting a literal blue collar and wearing a suede

jacket that I'm pretty sure my grandpa actually owned.