Abrams' Norman Rockwell books
   Norman Rockwell - Pictures For The American People
   Norman Rockwell - A Sixty Year Retrospective
   Norman Rockwell - Artist And Illustrator (Buechner)
   Norman Rockwell (Marling-Abrams)    [-BELOW THE LINE-]
   Norman Rockwell's Christmas Book    [-BELOW THE LINE-]
   Norman Rockwell - My Adventures As An Illustrator    [-BELOW THE LINE-]

Norman Rockwell - Pictures For The American People (1999 - Harry N. Abrams) This book has its flaws, but it is one of the ideal sizes in regards to handling and does house a lot of different pieces of art. This is a 'catalogue' that was created for, and traveled with, a 1999-2002 American exhibition tour of Rockwell's art and includes a number of essays about the artist and his career. Essays are titled: Why Norman Rockwell-Why Now ?, The People's Painter, The Great Art Communicator, Norman Rockwell-A New Viewpoint, Some Comments From The Boy In The Dining Car, Ways Of Seeing, The Four Freedoms, Ruby Bridges And A Painting, The Kids Are All Right-After The Prom, The Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell's Christmas, Rebelling Against Rockwell and Reintroducing Norman Rockwell. What are the flaws ? First, I'd say too much space was given to the works of other artists to illustrate essayist's points. It does look like all but one of the Rockwell exhibit pieces were presented, but they were able to include 22 other Rockwell pieces and could have added 16 more, except they gave the large-reproduction space too: Marshall Arisman, Peter Arno, Frederick Barnard, Alan E. Cober, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Brad Holland, John Leech, J.C. Leyendecker, John Frederick Peto, Jackson Pollack, Nicolas Poussin, Dick Sargent, Barney Tobey and UNKNOWN. Another deficiency was with all that text, many pieces, even when singly featured on a page, had to be reduced to fit in half the page. Thematically, each of the essays was opened with a full-bleed detail-extract from a piece featured within - beautiful, but all the same, another dozen pages lost that could have featured other Rockwell pieces. With all that said, the reproduction quality seems excellent and the works are indexed in the back. The text would be considered very illuminating, unless you've read many of the other commentaries on the artist's work. Out of 200-odd pages, 120 are dominated by the art, with 110 of those featuring a large-ish single piece. You can see that Montgomery's book NORMAN ROCKWELL, THE BEST OF NORMAN ROCKWELL and the one called 102 FAVORITE PAINTINGS are recommended as better artbooks, but note that if you have all of them, you will find 27 new pieces and one more that is a repeat but gets an even better presentation here.

Norman Rockwell - A Sixty Year Retrospective (1972 - Harry N. Abrams) (by Thomas S. Buechner) This is a catalogue for a touring exhibition of some of Rockwell's works organized by Bernard Danenberg Galleries. The List recommends purchasing the collections NORMAN ROCKWELL (MONTGOMERY), THE BEST OF NORMAN ROCKWELL, 102 FAVORITE PAINTINGS BY NORMAN ROCKWELL, PICTURES FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE and then NORMAN ROCKWELL (MARLING-TASCHEN) before this one. In this 160-page book, you will find 17 additional well-presented reproductions of paintings (a little less than a third of those here) to those selected for those better volumes and another four paintings that appear here better presented. Also, there are nine instances of large non-painting work included here, along with 31 other pages with multiple images, among which is a gathering of interesting greytone advertisements & illustrations. There are 10 fold-out pages and double-page spreads for displaying the larger works, of which only two are really marred by that presentation. Note that on remaining pages there are also, unfortunately, a number of color paintings that are presented in black-and-white. The book is divided into three periods of roughly 20 years each. The text runs thru these sections giving a pretty in-depth context to those portions of his career arc.

Norman Rockwell - Artist And Illustrator (Buechner) (1970 - Harry N. Abrams) (by Thomas S. Buechner) At 17 x 12.5 inches, this is the biggest book on The List. Need I say it ? Too big - way too big. Of the 328 pages here, only 122 have 'well-presented' pieces, with another 19 filled with multiple images. Distressingly, more than 75 pages are given to black-&-white photos of color artworks. There are nine fold-out pieces (two of them are doubles . . .) that open out into impressively large presentations, but I'm one to be inclined to say that that format does not enhance an artbook. There are another ten double-page spreads, of which seven make good use of portfolio layout and gutter placement. 35 pages are dominated by Buechner's commentary (much of which can also be found in the higher-scoring 60-YEAR RETROSPECTIVE). There is a lengthy section here describing the decades of magazine-illustration before Rockwell appeared on the scene, elaborating the characteristics that this artist absorbed, distilled and expressed again, shaped by his own sensitivities. The List recommends that you pick-up Montgomery's NORMAN ROCKWELL, THE BEST OF NORMAN ROCKWELL, 102 FAVORITE PAINTINGS, PICTURES FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, Marling's NORMAN ROCKWELL(from Taschen), 60 YEAR RETROSPECTIVE, NORMAN ROCKWELL AND THE SATURDAY EVENING POST books, NORMAN ROCKWELL'S WORLD OF SCOUTING, THE SATURDAY EVENING POST NORMAN ROCKWELL BOOK, THE NORMAN ROCKWELL TREASURY, the too-large 332 MAGAZINE COVERS and THE NORMAN ROCKWELL ALBUM, before this book - having those already means that this book will still yield 20 new art-pieces not yet seen 'well-presented' and three more pieces getting the outstanding presentation now that was less so in the better books.

Norman Rockwell (Marling-Abrams) [-BELOW THE LINE-] (1997 - Harry N. Abrams) (by Karal Ann Marling) Note that this is a different book than the one by the same author published by Taschen. The commentary here is much more extensive, though it uses all of the same lesser-known pieces to make their same particular points. However the art presentation is very deficient, in comparison. It is larger than its younger sibling, being 159 pages, but only 57 of those pages could be said to be dominated by the art (47 of those being large reproductions). A startling amount of space is wasted on color pieces being reproduced in black-&-white. There are two double-page-spreads that are still acceptable, even with the book's gutter (in fact, his huge landscape of Stockbridge gets its best presentation as one of them). All images are captioned with a title, creation-year, medium, size, current holder and what use it was originally put to, as well as being accompanied by a healthy commentary, though most of the time, it's just a re-explication of the same information found in the main body of text. The chapters have less to do with his biographical details than speculating at length about how those details affected the art he was producing at the time. The chapters are: Becoming An Illustrator, Kid Stuff, Norman Rockwell's Colonial Revival, The Saturday Evening Post, Willie Gillis Goes To War, Norman Rockwell-Painter, The "New" Norman Rockwell, Winter In Stockbridge, and a Chronology. So, all of the books up on 'The List' are recommended before this one, but if you do have them all, know that you would still find seven pieces well-presented here (mostly preliminaries) that you don't yet have in your collection.

Norman Rockwell's Christmas Book [-BELOW THE LINE-] (1977 - Harry N. Abrams) Not enough of Rockwell's work here to make the cut. Out of 222 pages only 75 could be said to be dedicated to the art, the bulk of the book being the stories, poems and carols that celebrate the season. Scattered throughout are small spot illustrations that are single character excerpts from Rockwell's paintings. The full pieces that are presented seem sharp & clear, though nothing is captioned. I'm currently looking at the original volume, but the later, 2009, edition is touted as being re-worked.

Norman Rockwell - My Adventures As An Illustrator [-BELOW THE LINE-] (1988 - Harry N. Abrams) (shaped by Thomas Rockwell from autobiographical recordings his father was tasked with making for this project) This is a fascinating read, but clearly wasn't meant as an art presentation. Though this was first published in 1960, I'm looking at a later edition that was updated after the artist's death. Earlier editions may be even less acceptable in what and how they present. For instance, there were a number of pithy spot-drawings by Rockwell that earlier began each chapter that aren't present in this edition (one might imagine that the small older pocket paperback edition doesn't pass muster at all). It doesn't make it up onto The List here because only 82 of its 432 pages could be said to feature his art (excluding the many black-&-white pictures of color pieces). Four of those pages contain multiple images, but that leaves 78 large 'well-presented' reproductions that are sharp & clear. And you'll find that over 30 of those aren't well-featured in any of the other books on The List. All reproductions are captioned adequately and the illustrations are listed at the back of the book.