Alain Bonnet: A Modest Press Illustration

The illustration that Norman Rockwell published in 1962 on the cover of a popular magazine presents an image of the symbolic confrontation between ancient figurative art and the new abstract art. This unpretentious image is at the center of animated debates on the artistic value of avant-garde trends and pleasingly illustrates the question of the reaction of the anonymous spectator to the stylistic experimentations of pictorial modernity. Rockwell's Connoisseur nevertheless does not answer the question that Life posed to its readers in 1948: ``Is modern art, considered as a whole, a good or a bad development? That is to say is it something that responsible people can support, or may they neglect it as a minor and impermanent phase of culture?''