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Uh, Rockwell was an illustrator. The intent of his illustrations was to sell magazines, in this case The Saturday Evening Post. When he switched over to Look in the 1960s, his style changed to meet the needs of that magazine, which was probably closer to his own thinking. He was, afterall, NYC born and raised.

If artists don't reflect their times or if that is too trite, then what times should they reflect? Few artists of any talent set out by saying, "Hey, ya know what? I wanna do something morally uplifting. Yeah, that's the ticket!" What they do is look at the world around them and reflect it back through the lens of their own intellect.

I'm no Spielberg fan, but you really give him too much credit and power. Families fly apart because they can. Women are no longer bound to their husbands financially. Husbands are often unable to meet the financial obligations of raising a famiy. And both husbands and wives say, "I'm unwilling to spend the rest of my life in this situation. I refuse to accept that this is as good as my life is going to get." Whether that's morally right or not, it's not Spielberg's fault.

Rockwell was a classically trained fine artist. That he made part of his living doing illustrations is little or no consequence. That he is well known and loved by at least four generations of Americans is. He work goes well beyond the SEP. His patriotic themes and his loving portrayals of life, country, family and God brought him plenty of work and commissions from many different quarters not unlike the patrons of other historically enduring artists. I can assure you that his work will be recognized by everyman for a long, long time to come even though elite 'artists' will continue to snort and pander their shabby dreck in urban galleries to well-heeled sophisticates for as long as the exchange of legal tender for excrement remains popular.

If I may continue to paint with a broad brush, I'd also say that most modern artists will vanish because 1) modern art is a fraud; 2) many chic 'artists' of this age have no talent - technical or otherwise; 3) art consumers will always be the last to say that the Emperor has no clothes and 4) precisely because they don't say anything worth knowing or remembering. Like some children, decadent art simply screams about pain and flings excrement. This is a good laugh in itself since these 'artists' are 99.9% Western and priveledged. As another real artist once put it - "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Now, I know that you must actually believe what you say about 'artists' reflecting the world through their intellects, but I give no more credence to that text book answer anymore than I would trust 'journalists' to report the facts.

Finally, I guess I fail to see where you think I give Spielberg too much power. Personally, I don't give him, or Hollywood, a second thought and rarely any money. That he is one of a few in the film industry that can write his own ticket does say something about his power in that cloister and his ability to make a buck. No, for me, in the end, he is just another clueless boomer. The social disintegration I mention, however, IS the real legacy of the boomers. Spielberg just happens to be a pop-culture voice crooning the golden hits of that pop-culture g-g-generation.