TIME and PLACE

 The TIME

The Time was in the middle of “Atman’s Big Bang” -- “by far the biggest explosion of artistic Creativity the world has ever seen.” This happened when technology finally stole the Creativity in art and music, and dance, from wealthy intellectuals and gave it to the common-man, the Public. The Public finally started to control the creativity in music with the LP records he paid for. And in art he controlled Creativity with the books and magazines, he paid for. And in advertising the common-man, Public, controlled the artistic creativity by buying the products the creativity in adds made him buy. 

If the Italian Renaissance was an explosion of artistic-creativity that was like a fire cracker then the mass-communication of technology made this far-greatest-explosion like an atomic bomb.  While in the European Renaissance people could line up in a row to see an artist’s work, technology allowed an artist’s image to be seen within a few weeks all around the world by millions.

Before TV became a standard household item, books and magazines entertained the public with stories, fiction. Illustrations usually complimented these stories to help sell them. With time illustrations became so popular that they were like comics in which pictures, illustrations, could often give life to an otherwise dead story. 

In the first half of the last century the illustration profession was by far the most lucrative profession. A popular illustrator made far, far, more money than the average MD. The illustration profession back then could only be compared to the popularity of today's big athletes and movie stars. Thus even though they are in History’s black-hole today, when they were around these Famous Artists were far more famous and popular and wealthy than any artists ever before.

The PLACE

The Place was at the “Biggest Global Empire” of artistic-creativity in Advertising, Publications and Art that the world has ever seen: The Charles E. Cooper Studio.

After WW II the U.S. was the global focus of artistic creativity that catered to the “unprompted Public” as Europe and Asia was still recovering from the war.

After WW II the art and its illustration in Europe was controlled by the Canine Wisdom that experts needed for their Pavlov’s Art that these experts kept calling their “real art.” But this Pavlov’s Art, “academic or intellectual art,” did nothing to entertain the Public. So if magazines in Europe wanted to do more than just feed the ego of intellectuals... if they wanted to entertain their Public then foreign publishers were forced to come to the US and get the images from the Illustrators who were entertaining the Public with Atman’s Big Bang -- by far the Greatest Explosion of artistic creativity the world had ever seen. And the Public did not have to judge this Creativity because it was all a matter of feeling, inside, Heaven Inside. The same feelings the Public did not have to judge but enjoy from Soul music, Blues... and Elvis and the Beatles to Ray Charles.

 Out of all the art-illustration agencies only one dominated the global picture in the 1950s like the New York Yankees dominated the national sport of baseball. The Charles E. Cooper Studio was a global-empire of visual art that served as both advertising agency and illustration agency for many, if not most, of the major corporations of the world, and many if not most of the publishing houses of most of the world.

The Charles E Cooper Studio , CEC, had by far the most Publicly popular illustrators the world had ever seen. This was because their creativity entertained the Public in a way that gave them no rivals. These artists made the Cooper Studio an illustration-artistic powerhouse that had no rivals, any more than the NY Yankees had any rivals when their dynasty was unbeatable.

In the mid 1950's there might have been, at best, 50 established illustrators in NY. It was literally like the music business and the movie business is today. For every successful band there are probably thousands of eager bands hopelessly wanting success. Out of tens of thousands of actors there might be one that gets a part in the movies, and of these only maybe one in thousands make it big.

This was the same scenario for illustrators in the mid 1950s. And the ratio of success was getting more and more hopeless because for every illustrator that was quitting the business the art schools were pumping out perhaps a thousand, and this did not include the tens of thousands of perfectly good artists that no more needed a college degree to be perfectly good artists than Babe Ruth needed a degree to be a perfectly good baseball player.

Because Language forces us to associate a lot of Canine Wisdom with this word “art,” this story cannot be told in terms of art and its creativity. The only way it can be told is when this art and creativity is compared to other fields of creativity and performance, like sports and music.

Babe Ruth's sport of baseball gives us a solid start.

For a college baseball player to graduate and start playing in professional baseball, without going through the minor leagues, would be essentially impossible.

Now imagine how good a baseball player would have to be to graduate from college and go directly into the starting lineup of a professional baseball team because from day one he can hit more home runs in a game than any other player on the team. And besides that, he has the athletic versatility to pitch and strike out more players in a game than any pitcher on the team.

This analogy is a solid start.

Now, let us make this player even better. Let us make this player so good that from college he can go to not just any old team but the New York Yankees. And so he goes to NY and starts in the lineup because he can hit more home-runs than any of the players and then he can strike out more players than any of the pitchers.

But his analogy is not enough.

Let us make this player even better. Let us take this player and make him so good that from college he can go to NY Yankees at the height of their baseball DYNASTY when they had competition but no rivals. He goes to the Yankees and starts in the lineup because he can hit more home-runs than any of the payers, like Babe Ruth, and Joe DiMaggio and then he can strike out more players than any of the pitchers.

Now the analogy is getting hot.

If this athlete is going to have the same versatility in sports as Norman Adams had in art then after jumping into the Yankee roster, at the height of the Yankee dynasty, this versatile-athlete could go down to the Dallas Cowboys and replace their running back because he can run for more yards per game. But we need more versatility. So after the football season this athlete can do some casual training in skiing and swimming and running so that he can go the Winter Olympics and win a gold medal and then go to the Summer Olympics to win another two more gold medals in swimming and then another in track and field.

This is the versatility in athletics we need that compares to the versatility Norman Adams has in art.

If we use music as an analogy, then for a musician to have the versatility in music that Norman Adams has in art then such a musician would be able to go up to most any instrument in any orchestra in the world, and play it as well as, if not better than, any musician in any orchestra in the world.

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In the height of “by far the biggest explosion of artistic creativity the world had ever seen” -- Atman’s Big Bang -- Norman Adams graduates from art school in LA and goes to New York. And while tens of thousands of perfectly good artists are killing each other to get a job interview at the Cooper Studio each year, Charles E. Cooper -- the head of the largest and by far the most successful Art, Advertising, Illustration and Global Dynasty the world has ever seen -- this Charles Cooper rolls out the red-carpet for this relative Nobody from a very funny place with an even more funny name called Walla Walla.

Cooper gives Norman Adams a job because Norman Adam’s Still Life paintings tell him, Cooper, that Norman Adams is as good, if not a better, artist than anyone he has ever seen. Norman Adams starts to work for Cooper and ends up being one of his biggest gold mines. 

When Norman Rockwell was “fired” by the Saturday Evening Post because they “hated him” ( mostly because for decades the Post had forced him into painting the same stuff that with enough time made the public sick) ... when Norman Rockwell was falling from his lofty perch, Norman Adams’ technical-skills and artistic-versatility made him one of the biggest gold-mines the Cooper Studio ever had.  And while the Cooper illustrators were pealing off as the Public’s styles and fads changed, Norman Adams was doing “what no other artist has ever done” as his technical-skills and artistic-versatility allowed him to adapt to any changes in Public’s tastes.

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And thus Norman Adams was so good at what he did that he prophetically did in art what no one has ever done before. And if they could come close, it is unlikely that anyone would have twelve Famous Artists prophetically set the stage... And if prophets could set the stage then artists would not have a global-empire at the very heights of the greatest explosion of artistic creativity, Atman’s Big Bang, that the world has ever seen... and history missed it, AGAIN.

AGAIN: History also missed the greatest explosion of artistic-creativity in Europe, by about three hundred years. History missed the Italian Renaissance until Historians around 1857 tried to figure out what happened to bring Europe out of the Middle Ages. And thus Historians came up with the word “Renaissance” – three hundred years AFTER it happened. 

What separates Norman Adams from these Famous Artists. And this, more than anything else, puts him in yet an even deeper black-hole than the black-hole inside the black-hole in which History keeps the four most Famous Artists that the Public also made the most successful: Fred Ludekens, Harold von Schmidt, Robert Fawcett, and probably the most versatile artist of them all, John Atherton.

How much more successful were these four especially Famous Artists compared to the eight others? 

When the covers of the Saturday Evening Post was making giants out of illustrators, Harold von Schmidt was so successful -- he was in such demand by both corporations and Publishers -- that he turned down the Post to do its covers.

He saw what the Post was doing to the creativity of the artists who were doing Post covers , like Dohanos and Rockwell -- it was killing their creativity. He did not have to say this specifically, because Norman Rockwell did.

Norman Rockwell tells us, in his Famous Artist textbook, that on one occasion he tried to be creative and deviate from the traditional format of the Post. He then tells us that the Post establishment had such a fit that it cured him from ever trying to be creative and original again. (Until he started to work for Look Magazine)

Harold von Schmidt said that doing Post covers would limit his creativity ... and he added that he would “rather do 100 illustrations than 10 Post covers.”  (What he probably meant to say: “I would rather ENJOY doing 100 illustrations to Entertain myself and the Public than WORK and do 10 mundane Post covers.”) 

When Harold von Schmidt turned down the Saturday Evening Post’s offer to do its covers, it was like Michelangelo turning down the Pope to paint the Sistine Chapel.

If Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were the “epic icons” of the Italian Renaissance then there are two artists, more than any other, who stand out with their technical-skills, artistic-creativity and phenomenal-versatility to be the Epic Icons for Heaven’s Big Bang. John Atherton's life was cut short during a fishing trip, the other Epic Icon was born at the right Time and Place to do what nobody has done before in art, music or sports: Norman Adams. 

-- Geza Palotas

Heaven-inside, Atman: the universal Creativity within the common-man, Public.  The ecstatic saints -- of ALL religions -- tell us that this creative “energy” inside each one of us manifests itself as a Joy that Jesus called “ Heaven is inside.” 

This Joy that is Heaven is the same Joy, and sometimes hysteria -- and even ecstasy, that entertainers sometimes have and activate in the Public at a good-old rock concert, opera... sports events, and even a religious revival.

Canine Wisdom: The wisdom Pavlov’s dog would need to explain why salivation makes “the sound of a bell taste good.” Which, to the unprompted Public, is a far more reasonable canine-cliche than is “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

In “art” Canine Wisdom would explain why a dog wags his tail with the joy of “real art” at a cue -- , an object, like a urinal or an image of a soup-can -- that the unpromted-Public would take to be junk or garbage. 

The phenomenal impact of Atman’s Big Bang is more obvious today in the music of that explosive period.  Half a century later, the popular-music (the Public was its measure) of the mid 1900s is still far more popular TODAY, with the Public than any other music of any period before or since... while the just-as-popular art (illustrations in books, adds and magazines) that the Public made just as famous -- AT THE SAME TIME --  is just as forgotten as are its artists, like most of the Famous Artists, who are deep inside History’s black-hole. 

The word “hate” comes from Norman Adams who used it in the context of the “love” he had for Rockwell.

 Towards the end of Norman Rockwell’s career at the Post, the Post “hated” Norman Rockwell so much they seemed to go out of their way just to offend him.

So when Rockwell was in Europe the Post went behind his back to change his Nehru painting. They hired Norman Adams to change the background with an illustration they could paste onto the original.  Adams told the Post that any change to the background could only hurt a perfectly good painting. But the more he insisted the more furious the Post got until they finally got their way. It seems they were far more interested in upsetting Rockwell than they did ruining one of his finer paintings. After the painting was published the Post returned the painting to Norman Adams long enough for him to remove the pasted-on revision, which he still has.

The word “love.” Norman Adams says that the Saturday Evening Post did Norman Rockwell a huge favor by “firing him.” This was because their parting forced Rockwell to go to Look Magazine where he was far more creative than the Post ever allowed him to be.  And according to the story of Susan E. Meyer,  in her 1981 book “Norman Rockwell’s People,” John Atherton -- and Harold Von Schmidt -- would most likely have agreed with Norman Adams.

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