Presentation Advice from Painter Norman Rockwell

November 6, 2009 by Jerry

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One of the Wall Street Journal’s most interesting features is their weekly “Anatomy of a Masterpiece,” where noted authorities analyze classic works in their fields: literature, architecture, music, and art. Recent offerings have focused respectively on Samuel Johnson’s 1759 novel Rasselas, St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Dmitri Shostakovich’s “24 Preludes and Fugues,” and Théodore Géricault’s 1819 painting, “The Raft of the Medusa;” the latter inspired an earlier blog about pictorial composition as it relates to presentation slide design.

A more recent analysis of classic art has inspired today’s blog but, this time, crosses the line from art into content. The masterpiece is American painter Norman Rockwell’s 1943 set of four paintings, “Freedom of Speech,” “Freedom of Worship,” “Freedom from Want” and “Freedom from Fear.” During World War II the paintings were part of a U.S. Treasury Department campaign to lift the spirits of the nation and to raise money for war bonds. Rockwell took as his inspiration President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State of the Union speech two years earlier.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four
essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression⎯everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way⎯everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings
which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants⎯everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of
armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit
an act of physical aggression against any neighbor⎯anywhere in the world.

Bruce Cole, an art historian and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who analyzed the paintings in the Wall Street Journal masterpiece feature, noted that “Rockwell said in his autobiography that he had difficulty conceptualizing the abstract, and internationalist, Four Freedoms, especially the negative rights of ‘want’ and ‘fear.’”

Justifiably so. Freedom of speech and worship, taken from the Bill of Rights, aspire to positive goals, while the other two freedoms only aspire to avoid negative states. No wonder Rockwell had difficulty with want and fear. Cole quotes the painter, “‘Neither of them,’ Rockwell thought, ‘had any wallop.’”

The lesson for presentations is that stating ideas negatively loses wallop. All too often we hear presenters, in attempting to define their business, say, “What we’re not is…” Audiences don’t want to hear what you are not. Tell them what you are.

The classic case of negative phrasing was Richard Nixon’s attempt to defend himself during the 1973 Watergate scandal, when he said, “I am not a crook.” A better defense would have been to say, “I am an honest man.”

If you want to defend the market position of your business, rather than say, “Other companies in our market can’t compete with us,” say instead, “We have a competitive advantage in our market.”

In last week’s blog, “The Blame Game,” you read about a patriotic World War II song. The lyrics—being contemporary with Rockwell’s campaign, as well as applicable to communicating your message—bear repeating here: “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.”

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