When I was a boy, my favorite artist was Norman Rockwell. His “Satur-day Evening Post” covers used to amuse and move me. I remember one in partic-ular that showed a barber cutting a boy’s hair. He had got so distracted by the magazine the boy was reading that he cut a swathe right up his head, like a ski run clearing up a forested mountain.

Rockwell’s images of small-town America seemed to me charming and I admired the artist’s skill at depicting real people. To me, he got the citizens of this nation right, along with the places where they worked and the things they used. The warm colors that this artist preferred added to his allure for me.

Later, I discovered that I should not have liked Rockwell all that much. He was merely sentimental, critics said, hardly a serious artist. Instead, he was a populist, someone who did the easy stuff rather than the work of a real artist. Yes, he had a certain technique and surface gloss, but he should never be classed among the real painters of our time.

This past autumn, however, I discovered that Norman Rockwell was being celebrated as a serious artist after all. Suddenly, it seemed, the critical judgment of the past was overturned and he was now being recognized as an imposing fig-ure with talent, worthy of being taken seriously.

Museums across America were now taking part in a national tour of his works that would end at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. In a lead article featured in the New York Times, critic Michael Kimmelman even called him “a good artist,” and praised him because “Rockwell gave us a people’s history of America during the first half of the century.”

Something of the same turn-around in critical opinion took place much earlier with one of my favorite artists in another sphere – classical music. Sir Ed-ward Elgar loomed large for me way back in my teenage years. He had won my affection especially with his “Dream of Gerontius,” a grand-scale oratorio that used to thrill me from adolescence on.

Elgar, however, I later discovered, did not rate with critics. In the middle decades of the century now past, the Boston Symphony and other leading musical ensembles would not perform his major works. Everyone who ever attended a high school graduation, of course, knew his “Pomp and Circumstance” march but music lovers were unlikely to hear his symphonies, concertos, or songs.

Some three decades ago, however, critics discovered that Elgar was not so bad after all. Since that recognition, he has come to enjoy great popularity. No-wadays his compositions are performed regularly to great acclaim by orchestras, soloists, and singers. Not only is it allowed to like Elgar now, but you can claim him as a favorite composer as I still do.

I cite Rockwell and Elgar simply to indicate how much, as we age, re-ceived opinion changes. If you live long enough, you come to see, not only huge changes in inventions, such as the arrival of computers, but also more subtle transformations of thought and opinion. Nothing stands still, not even the way we approach works of art.

Relativity marks our lives much more than we ever imagined it would. As the ancient Greek philosopher saw it, the stream moves on and you can never dip your toe into the same water twice. Critical opinion is always fickle. The spirit of the time, what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, determines outlook much more widely than we would have thought possible.

Some people among us manage to hold on to cherished tastes their whole lives. Others of us tack our sails to winds prevailing at the moment. Most people, I suspect, do both. We hang on to some of our tastes while exchanging other favo-rites, swapping the old for the new.

This ebb and flow helps to make the world more interesting. It gives us material to reflect on and to talk about with friends. New enthusiasms feed our souls as do changed appraisals of figures we have known for a long time.

We can also take pleasure when others swing around to recognize our good taste and uphold what we judge excellent. I feel glad about critics having arrived at the point of sharing my own sound judgements. Whatever took them so long?

My prejudices in the area of culture have also held up and withstood much pressure to change. Sinatra, for example, I have never much liked. Nor do I have any feeling for Barbra Streisand. In so-called higher culture, I still do not like De-bussy, no matter his greatness in musical history.

Given time, however, these dislikes may break down. Meantime, I cherish both likes and dislikes and wait for changes inevitably to arrive.

Richard Griffin