Norman Rockwell, Rosie the Riveter

We're at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art looking at an American icon, Norman Rockwell's painting of Rosie the Riveter from 1943. We see this woman who is muscular and tough and wearing goggles and eating a ham sandwich and wearing denim overalls, that iconic image of the support that women lent on the home front for World War II. Thousands and thousands of women entered the workforce during the war. Men went to serve in the war and women served their country by going to work, taking the place of men. If you are able to see a picture of the woman who sat as Rockwell's model for Rosie, she was much more feminine, but he marries her face with the prophet Isaiah that is at the top of the Sistine Chapel. That figure that Michelangelo created was this incredibly muscular figure. So in a way, this is a male figure onto which a female head and then also a more voluptuous body is created. He also uses that point of view that Michelangelo used so well, having us, the viewer, look up at the figure. Anytime that you're looking from below, it makes the figure loom larger. And that machine she's carrying, the riveter that she used to construct airplanes, it looks heavy. It looks like she must have been very strong to carry that and to do her job. You get the sense that she has the power, both the physical power, but also the grit to be successful. And I love the way that she is holding her lunchbox, which gives us her name, Rosie. And she is almost holding it like an animal claw going over it that is, again, so strong. She's on her lunch in this picture, but there is nothing relaxed about her. She is on a mission, and she is never going to waver. We have the stars and stripes reminding us her reason for taking on this work. And at the same time, if you look at her feet, and she's wearing just such an American pair of loafers. Oh, and I love her socks. And don't you love her socks? And you can just really feel the texture of them. But she is standing and crushing a copy of Mein Kampf. And that was a book that Hitler wrote explaining his anti-Semitic ideology and his plans for Germany. But what's interesting to me, too, is that riveter, that machine, and the hose that comes out of it almost reads like a serpent. And there is a passage in Isaiah where he refers to the serpent. And of course, this is a symbol of evil. And so we have a sense of her righteousness, her patriotism, her desire to serve her country, and also to stamp out Nazi ideology. That riveting drill has overcome that serpent-like shape and basically brought it under control. Well, and also when you said that idea of it being on her lap, I thought immediately of images from the Renaissance of a Madonna and child. But here, no child but a machine. Where that takes me is to thinking about how this painting is created in 1943. America's increasing connection to the war, lending that power that would allow the Germans to be defeated, was really coming into its own at this moment. We see the home version of what's helping that happen. I just want to throw in my favorite part, which is what's tucked into her pocket. Because in all of her strength, in all of the way that she reads in a masculine way, she's got a compact and a handkerchief. She's working in this job that is traditionally a man's job, wearing man's clothing and these masculine-looking shoes and socks. She's not forgetting her femininity. I love the fact that it looks like she's just put on her lipstick. And even in the pose, it has an elegance that does have a feminine twist to it. You can sense that the paint was applied very thinly. You can see the texture of the canvas underneath, as though Rockwell seems to have chosen a canvas that was especially coarse in its weave. And so her roughness and her ability to tough it out and do what her country needs fits with the surface that this was painted on. It allowed Rockwell to get that feeling of blue jean denim without having to actually paint the texture. Another detail that I just love in this painting is the row of buttons. You see a red cross pin. You also see a V for victory pin. You see some other buttons that relate to supporting organizations that were lending help, particularly those that women were engaged in for the war. But here they also act as her jewelry. In another circumstance, if she had had on her white cotton blouse and her skirt, she would have probably had on a necklace to go with. But here the organizational buttons provide that. And it's funny that you said that because I was just thinking about how overalls are fashionable today and how unusual this would have been to see a woman wearing clothing like this. This must have been shocking in a way that I think is hard for us to recapture today. There are so many things that were overturned during this World War II period as far as what was acceptable for women to do. And it's interesting because after the war, there was a real tension and real challenges particularly in the workplace because women proved that they could do the job of men. And when you had veterans coming home who of course wanted their jobs back, there was on the one hand this great freedom that women felt. And they really felt that they could go on and do so many more things than say in the pre-war era. But at the same time, there was a conversation around what really is a woman's proper place.