How does this artwork elucidate its Creation?
The painting was created for the cover of an edition of The Saturday Evening Post, published on 6 July 1946, from sketches that Rockwell made in March 1946. It depicts the cleaning of the amber-coloured glass of the torch, an operation undertaken annually each July. Rockwell focuses on just a small part of the Statue of Liberty – the torch, a 42 feet (13 m) long arm, and part of the head of the colossal statue, silhouetted against a clear summer blue sky. Five workmen are attached to the statue by ropes, including one who is a caricature of Rockwell himself, and one African-American in a red shirt. The inclusion of a non-white figure working with whites, apparently only noticed in 2011, contravened a Saturday Evening Post policy of only showing people of ethnicity in subservient roles.
African-American Statue of Liberty The Saturday Evening Post