But I wound up intrigeud and, dare I say it, a little bit charmed. And sentimentality is not my thing.

You have to admire the distinctiveness and uniformity of his style, though that in itself doesn't raise him above the level of "illustrator," not that there's anything cheesy about illustrators, especially nowadays.

But his imagination for homespun tableau was remarkable. Which is to say that all his paintings were the same yet all different.

There were a few that brought to mind, strange is it sounds, the 1950s and '60s Mad Magazine.

For example, a picture of a group of adolescent boys standing on a golf green, each in schlumpy clothes, shouldering their schlumpy golf bags, watching a veritable Alfred E. Neuman at the center of the picture reacting to a missed short putt.

Bug-eyed through his proto-nerd eyeglasses, ears like Alfred E's, baffled. The kids behind him wanly smiling encouragement or just looking bummed.

On second thought, the expression on the putter's face is a long way from "What, Me Worry?"

And I have to deduct a point for the sweetness on the faces behind him, bedraggled (and all wearing sneakers) though they be. It's been awhile, so I don't remember the other pictures, but my impression was that, in his own idealized and sentimental way, Rockwell had a gear that could almost be called wicked.

And for the American populace in Rockwell's time, that watered-down wickedness may have been all that was needed to indicate a rub mildly against the grain.

Whereas after WW2 and particularly as we entered the Cold War and the Baby Boomers grew up on TV and rock and roll and, yes, Mad Magazine, a much more concentrated, not at all gentle kind of poke in the ribs was required to achieve the same effect, at least on the emerging increasingly cynical and absurdity-loving mainstream.

Concerning the golf picture, I probably should deduct another point because I love golf. There's plenty of bad golf art and calendar photography, but I'll always look at it.