Distant Shores: The Odyssey of Rockwell Kent (review)

Distant Shores: The Odyssey of Rockwell Kent by Constance Martin. Chameleon Books, Chesterfield, MA, U.S.A., and Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A., in association with the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA, U.S.A., 2000. ISBN: 0-520-22712-3.

This is the catalog for an exhibition of 80 paintings, prints and drawings by Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), the American artist and writer whose stark, dramatic drawings for the 1930 edition of Moby Dick brought him fame as a book illustrator. Kent was a student of William Merrit Chase, Robert Henri and Abbott H. Thayer (who was a naturalist as well as a painter), and a friend and classmate of George Bellows and Edward Hopper. This catalog is not a study of Kent's illustrations, but of unsung, less important views of natural settings that came from his extended visits to remote wilderness areas in Maine, Alaska, Newfoundland, Greenland and Tierra del Fuego. Despite his popularity, Kent's reputation plummeted in 1953 when he was ordered by Senator Joseph McCarthy to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where he was accused of leftist leanings. While he denied being a communist, in response to the subsequent seizure of his passport, he gave a large collection of his paintings, illustrations and manuscripts to "the people of the Soviet Union." It is surprising, yet partly appropriate, that this traveling exhibition should originate at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, because, however separate their styles and the politics of their followers, these two artists named Rockwell admired each other's work and were often mistaken for one another by the public.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
2022 X Avenue, Dysart, IA 52224-9767, U.S.A.
E-mail: <ballast@netins.net>.

Roy R. Behrens is a professor of art at the University of Northern Iowa, where he teaches graphic design, illustration and design history. He is editor of Ballast Quarterly Review, art director of the North American Review, contributing editor of Print, and he serves on the board of advisors for Gestalt Theory. His published books include Life of Fiction (with Jerome Klinkowitz), Art and Camouflage, Design in the Visual Arts and Illustration as an Art. E-mail: <ballast@netins.net>.

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 16, No. 1, Autumn 2000.)

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