There were hardly any malls when Norman Rockwell was painting his Saturday Evening Post covers of small-town life, domestic bliss, and unfettered patriotism.

Yet somehow an exhibit that re-creates in 3D those beloved icons of the American experience seems right at home in the commercial, crowd-pleasing atmosphere of the King of Prussia mall.

For Rockwell was perhaps the most crowd-pleasing of all American artists. As the movie at the start of "Rockwell's America: Celebrating the Art of Norman Rockwell" relates, his work is recognized by almost everyone in the country, and has been reproduced more than Picasso, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt . . . combined!

The Disneyesque show opened yesterday in the mall and runs until March 14.

With his magazine covers and posters, Rockwell the illustrator held a mirror up to America, although he said he painted life as he would like it to be, not necessarily as it was. Though critics once dismissed his work as too kitschy, the art world increasingly is coming to view Rockwell as an important artist who captured America in tender, sometimes lighthearted moments, said Stephanie Plunkett, chief curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass.

Today, his paintings hang in major museums, and one, Breaking Home Ties, a misty-eyed portrait of a boy leaving for college to the dismay of his father and dog, sold for $15.4 million three years ago.

But as someone whose magazine covers helped push the Post's circulation to six million at its peak in the 1960s, Rockwell also understood the power of commerce.

And in today's culture nothing shouts commerce quite like a mall, which makes up for lack of prestige with volume. (Just ask Thomas Kinkade, who became "America's most collected living artist" by hawking his weirdly glowing paintings at America's malls.)

"Rockwell created art for the people," Plunkett said. "He loved the fact that many people saw his work."

The 10,000-square-foot exhibit allows visitors to stroll right into life-size re-creations of Rockwell's paintings. The traveling show opened four years ago in Nashville at Opryland - another place well-suited to his homespun appeal - and visited seven other cities before King of Prussia.

Rockwell fans will see many of their favorites: Puppy Love, in which a boy and girl sit close on a bench; Vacation, featuring a joyous upside-down schoolboy; After the Prom, with two teens sipping a drink at a soda fountain; and Triple Self Portrait, which shows Rockwell looking at himself in a mirror as he paints his somewhat younger-looking portrait.

After the brief movie about the artist, a purple velvet curtain parts to reveal a mock-up of Rockwell's studio, with a sculpture of the artist at his easel painting the famous self-portrait.

There's almost too much bric-a-brac strewed about to take it all in before you move to the next room, where some of his most famous rural scenes are brought to life.

Rosemarie Squeri of Broomall and her son, Nick, 31, a special-education teacher, were enchanted.

"His pictures are of an ideal world, a world people want to live in," said Squeri, who is a lifelong fan and has visited the Rockwell museum.

Looking at Freedom From Want, depicting a too-happy-to-be-real family sitting down to turkey and trimmings, a wistful Nick Squeri said, "It shows perfection, what we all strive for in our lives."

Jennifer Gordon, 42, a photographer from Philadelphia, brought her children, ages 2, 7, and 12. They loved the interactive parts of the show demonstrating how Rockwell interpreted his era's "new" technologies - the car, the radio, the television, the phone.

"I've always loved him," said Gordon. "He's real, and he tells stories with his art, which is great."

Mary Lou McKee, 72, of Johnstown, Pa., a tour guide who stopped into the exhibit while waiting for a busload of shoppers, had seen it before, though she couldn't remember where.

"It's excellent. Norman Rockwell's work is so down-to-earth with ordinary people and he covers so many topics," said McKee, who has made four cross-stitch pillows of Rockwell paintings and owns a lamp of Puppy Love.

After visiting Main Street, Small Town USA; the Four Freedoms gallery; and the Home for the Holidays Christmas scenes, guests amble into the final room - and see more than 300 Saturday Evening Post covers that Rockwell painted between 1916 and 1963.

They are asked to vote for their favorites. For Squeri, it was Saying Grace, in which a mother and child pray with heads bowed at a table. Squeri's son searched for his favorite, A Boy and His Dog, depicting a lad and his pup in a veterinarian's office.

The Gordons loved the civil rights-themed The Problem We All Live With, depicting an African American girl in pigtails being escorted to school by U.S. marshals. The scene was inspired by Ruby Bridges, who integrated an all-white school in New Orleans in 1963. In Rockwell's rendering, America's best-known racial slur is scrawled on the wall behind the girl.

McKee picked the Four Freedoms. As she peered at the covers, uniformly flat but sentimental and even manipulative, she summed up what it was she liked best about Rockwell: his verisimilitude.

"It looks like something," she said. "I don't go for this modern stuff that looks like anybody can do it if they spilled a paint can."

If You Go

What: "Rockwell's America: Celebrating the Art of Norman Rockwell" runs to March 14 at the Plaza at King of Prussia.

Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

Admission: $5. It's free for children 12 and younger, and there's a $1 discount with the donation of a can of food or a nonperishable item for Philabundance.

Contact staff writer Kathy Boccella at 610-313-8123 or kboccella@phillynews.com.