Golden
Grand, 36”x76” oil painting by Norman Adams
NORMAN
ADAMS
--- If
Norman Rockwell was a Steven Spielberg of Art then
Norman Adams
was Art's James
Cameron. Adam's “Avatar”
is this Golden Grand. ---
-----------------------------
There
is a “Disbelief” that goes beyond the word “Art.”
IMAGINE this “Unbelievable”: Imagine all the paintings in a museum working together to make a specific painting “Unbelievable.”
Rarely does art impress the viewer with the word “disbelief.” Indeed some people can spend a lifetime going to art galleries full of Rembrandts, Picassos and van Goghs .. and never be impressed with this word “disbelief” that comes directly from a painting and NOT its price.
All his life Norman Adams pushed his paintings into this beyond-art word of Disbelief.
If ever there was a person born to be an artist it was Norman Adams.
From his youngest age Norman was passionate about painting. He
would collect every image he could from art books, newspapers and
magazines and then set out to paint better. He was especially
impressed with three artists that more than any other perfected
their trompe
l'oeil (literally, "fool the eye") style into this
word “disbelief”: William
Harnett, John
F. Peto and John
Haberle.
Norman Adams took everything every artist could
give him and then went beyond... so he could do the “unbelievable.”
paint better and better paintings so that when he entered them
in shows or exhibitions
all the other paintings would work
together
to make his paintings: unbelievable. Times Three.
ONE: Before he graduated from the Los Angeles Art Center School he created a portfolio of paintings to more or less impress the msanagers of Illustration Agencies with a “disbelief” … that would make them hire him. His portfolio was so “unbelievable” that THREE of the leading Illustration Agencies in NY offered him a job while thousands of perfectly good artists and illustrators were begging for work. He ended up working for the “New York Yankees of Illustration”; the Charles E Cooper Studio.
TWO: once he was established in NY as a “Babe Ruth of Illustration” he submitted his best paintings to Society of Illustrators shows to convince everyone, especially other Illustrators, that even as a rookie in the business he could do what nobody else could … as he won award after award until it got boring. He impressed not only Illustrators but gallery owners from all over NY who often kept calling him wanting to sell his “unbelievable” paintings. But he was too busy working as an Illustrator, mostly day and night, to consider painting for galleries. More or less: all the paintings at these Society of Illustrators shows made Norman Adams' paintings appear “unbelievable.”
The measure of the “unbelievable” however was not in the art critics, it was not in the Illustrators, and it was not in the gallery owners: it was in Security. The Security at these exhibits would insist that something unbelievable was in Norman's paintings because while visitors would browse all the other painting in the show many of them, especially the kids, had to touch what was “unbelievable” in his paintings.
THREE: towards the end of his career Norman Adams did what he had done all his life: take the time and effort to gauge the competition. Then he raised the bar significantly when he was specifically paid to paint a painting that would “steal the show” at the largest and most popular 1988 Wildlife Art Show in the country at the time, in Minneapolis. Not only did the painting “steal the show” to get the “Best of Show” award but it was literally a show-stopper. While most people walked around browsing the artwork... many if not most had to stop and sometimes stand in line to stare at with “disbelief” at Norman Adams' Golden Grand.
...all the paintings at this huge art show
made this Golden
Grand painting of Norman Adams a show-stopping: Unbelievable!
“It takes a genius to spot a super-genius.”
Most of us are
blind to all the creativity, talent, work and effort
that lies
hidden behind what pleases us, what entertains us.
Often only those
“entertainers” who must compete with each other
can
realize all the creativity, talent, work and effort
it takes to
entertain better than anyone else.
History gives us example after example of how a genius is dumbfounded with a greater genius, a super-genius.
Perhaps the best example comes with the movie Good Will Hunting. In the movie a Fields Medal winning math professor discovers that a janitor, Will Hunting, played by Matt Damon, is a genius far far beyond anything the math professor can imagine. The professor tells the janitor that perhaps only five people in the world are smart enough to be dumbfounded by the super-genius, the janitor, Will Hunting.
Mozart's story, Amadeus, echoes the same. While the rest of the world was, at best, entertained with Mozart's music it took one of the greatest composers of his time, Antonio Salieri, to be literally dumbfounded by the super-genius Mozart.
So too with Johann Sebastian Bach. For over two hundred years Bach was unknown to the world until two geniuses of music Franz List and Frederic Chopin came along to be dumbfounded at the super-genius of Bach.
When Norman Adams was still a youngster he obsessively bought and even stole every magazine/ book that had illustrations by great Illustrators, especially Robert Fawcett. Fawcett was so super-successful at selling products, magazines and books with his images that the less-successful Illustrators called him the “Illustrator's Illustrator.”
Today Robert Fawcett is buried deep under the hundreds of billions of dollars that make “Modern Art” look good. But when Norman Adams was awed by Robert Fawcett he was exactly like Mozart was to music: Robert Fawcett was so super-successful at selling ideas, products... magazines and books with his visual-images that he was the standard by which “the most creative, successful, wealthy and famous professionals (Famous Artists School) the world has EVER known” would be judged.
Norman
Adams.
When it came to creating images that sells ideals,
ideas, products, books and magazines to the public
Norman Adams
was not just a genius but a super-genius.
And it took a genius –
the Illustrator's Illustrator, Robert Fawcett – to realize it.
The story of Norman
Adams is the story of “Time
and Place.”
By the time Norman Adams arrived on a
“red-carpet” at the Charles
E. Cooper Studio, in New York, Robert Fawcett was an old man.
Norman Adams met this old man, Robert Fawcett, only once. It was at
a Society
of Illustrators meeting.
The young neophyte Norman spotted the Old Man, Robert Fawcett, at the other end of the auditorium and was so intimidated by his idol/god that he had to turn around and occupy himself eating appetizers.
Then what was unimaginable to Norman happened: Norman’s idol/god, Robert Fawcett, came up behind Norman and touched him on the shoulder and -- just like Salieri must have introduced himself to Mozart – the Illustrator’s Illustrator introduced himself to the new kid on the block: Norman Adams.
Only after I
watched the movie Good Will Hunting, and Amadeus, did I realize why
Robert Fawcett -- the Illustrator’s Illustrator
-- would go up and introduce himself to a neophyte, a relative
unknown, like Norman Adams.
Robert Fawcett had seen Norman
Adams' paintings, so he knew exactly why Charles E. Cooper rolled
out the proverbial red-carpet for the youngster Norman Adams. It was
because he was like a Babe Ruth to Illustration. He had the
technical skills and the artistic creativity to create images that
could sell ideas, products.... magazines far better than anyone else
in the business.
-- Geza Palotas
