As the art critic Dave Hickey has observed, Norman Rockwell was inspired by the idea of American citizenship, and he often portrayed the places and occasions in American life which brought Americans together in that peculiar comradeship unique to functioning democracies.

In our polarized age, when the gap between rich and poor grows positively surreal, when urban environments no longer function as genuine melting pots, when suburban residential patterns emphasize the isolation of income-brackets, Rockwell's visions of community take on a nostalgic glow -- but in his own time Rockwell was celebrating something real, something in the now.

I'm particularly fond of Rockwell's paintings of people on trains -- a now uncommon mode of travel in which people from different backgrounds met as equals, in an environment that allowed for interaction.  There was space and time for interaction -- as there isn't, for example, on an airplane, which has no common space, where moving about is difficult and hardly encouraged.

In the painting at the head of this post, democracy rules -- a gang of skiers sets the excited tone of the passenger car . . . the quieter fellow submits, observes, is perhaps intrigued.  He's temporarily out of sync, but not out of place.

The "Saturday Evening Post" cover below is one of my favorite images of WWII.  A soldier on leave tries to make time with his girl, while a kid looks on jealously.  The soldier, the homefront and the future intersect momentarily on a crowded train in the middle of a dreadful war, and we see everything that's at stake in the conflict.

Below, a kid on a train journey by himself is watched over by a sophisticated professional who's seen it all but still finds it possible to be amused and touched by the rite of passage he's witnessing, as the kid tries earnestly to make his way in an adult arena.  The dining car waiter has a job to do -- but so does the kid, and he's working at it.

Americans of every background meet today as citizens, as equals, only at the polls on election days, or at casinos -- there are fewer and fewer everyday environments and occasions where one can feel the genuine community of citizenship, and that's partly why one finds such warm fellow-feeling at polling places and in casinos.  Rockwell was right to be sentimental about such places and occasions, and nostalgia is not a sufficient response to his images of them.  They should inspire us to recover what's been lost.