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Adams the ArtistOver the years, many anecdotal pieces have appeared about Walter Burt Adams as a person, artist and even businessman. Very few critics have discussed his artistic style and where he fits in to American Art History. As the personal stories about him reveal, Adams was fiercely independent. This quality extended into his painting. His work is not easily characterized, and though he developed a "mature" style, he frequently floated back and forth between styles, as if unwilling to commit fully to one or another. He even developed a unique method of dating his paintings. On both sides of his signature he would place a series of lines. The lines to the left of his name indicated the decade while those to the right indicated the year. For example, five hatch marks to the left and three to the right would be 1953. Adams was passionate about painting and he loved Evanston, particularly certain buildings and places, which he portrayed numerous times within his oeuvre. These corners, streetscapes and buildings are frequently familiar without being obvious. The viewer recognizes the scene but may or may not be able to place it. The highly realistic nature of his work contributes to this familiarity. Many of his paintings appear almost super-real, but upon close inspection, the paintings are loosely rendered - details are not filled in, faces are blank, storefront signs have no letters.
Adams' witty sense is already visible in the 1933
Self-Portrait, the earliest painting in the exhibit.
Throughout his career, Adams used compositional devices
to give his viewers interesting and unexpected
viewpoints.
Adams found subject matter in unusual places, in part
because he was able to see beauty and character where
others saw the commonplace. The Old Northwestern
University Heating Plant, from 1945, is one such example.
Here he selects an industrial scene and paints it in a
painstaking and attractive manner.
If Evanston Evening looks different from the other
paintings in the exhibit, then Flash Flood, 1951-1976,
looks downright foreign. Here we see a canvas that was
worked and re-worked over a period of 25 years. It shows
the influence (or at least knowledge of) several artists,
including Thomas Hart Benton, the regionalist artist, who
is referenced in the highly angular forms of the figures.
This technique was avant-garde in the 1930s, but retro in
the 1950s and certainly in the 1970s, when the work was
completed. The surrealist aspects, unusual fires and
pointed rocks, clearly reference Peter Blume's 1944-1948
masterpiece The Rock, which Adams would likely have seen
after it was accessioned by Art Institute of Chicago in
1956.
Walter Burt Adams depicted his subjects with great passion. The opportunity to see so many significant works of art by him, side by side, is a special treat and a unique chance to carefully view the breadth of his life's work. Within this retrospective, we learn a lot about Adams, but as with many important artists, we are also left with many questions.
Eden Juron Pearlman
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The painting is clearly signed, titled and dated on the spine
of a book in the center, right portion of the work; all
other book titles are unreadable. The painting is tightly
rendered and differs in many ways from most other works
in the exhibit. The work appears like a snapshot; the
artist looks out at the viewer in a serious manner, and
along the edge we see a small portion of a lampshade that
both sheds an eerie light and cuts into the composition
in an unusual way.
Frequently, he used street signs,
streetlights and even the edge of a building to draw the
viewer into the composition from an alternate viewpoint.
Examples of these devices appear in Adams' two versions
of the intersection of Dempster Street and Chicago
Avenue. The 1936 version of Chicago and Dempster is a
scene typical in 1930s midwestern art. This is the time
when the regionalists, such as Grant Wood and John Stuart
Currey, were creating nostalgic paintings of rural farm
scenes, which made viewers yearn for "days gone by." Not
surprisingly, Adams worked in the typical regional style.
The corner he chooses in the painting is very
recognizable, even today. The scene is both thematically
pleasant and aesthetically pleasing. The woman in the
foreground is attractive but ordinary, and captures our
interest without drawing us far from the actual subject,
the streetscape. An obvious contrast to this work is the
1972 version of the same street corner, a piece more
typical of his mature style. Here he uses a street sign
to cut off the foreground of the painting. The faces of
the people in the paintings are no longer
distinguishable, and the nostalgia is gone from the work.
Note the two workers
on top of the building; they simply blend into
architectural elements within the scene. Adams also found
beauty in the ordinary or mundane aspects of everyday
life.
The Garden Tree in the Back of "943," 1966, is an
example of this type of work. The piece is small and has
a gem-like quality. It is a beautifully painted depiction
of the alley behind his storefront at 943 Chicago Avenue.
He must have seen this area several times a day, yet its
attractiveness was not diminished by daily viewings. The
tree, which according to the title is the subject of the
work, is rendered in a loose, painterly fashion. We also
see a typical Adams device in his rendering of the
staircase, which appears to lead nowhere because we do
not see the entire staircase. Perhaps this is a metaphor;
perhaps just the way it appeared to him that day.
One of the most individual paintings in the exhibit is
Evanston Evening, 1937, a stunning view of Chicago Avenue
at night. Only window lights and one streetlight
illuminate the scene. The sky is an exquisite shade of
blue, which really makes this painting stand out from the
other works in the exhibit. Like most of Adams' settings,
the street scene is recognizable, adding comfort to
beauty. The work is subtly painted, the bricks of the
street simply hinted at through a series of economically
drawn lines.
The theme and context of Flash Flood reference the
flood portion of Michelangelo's ceiling in the Sistine
Chapel. In Michelangelo's work people try futilely to
escape the flood by climbing to higher ground, just as we
see here in Adams' painting. These references clearly
demonstrate Adams' familiarity with a wide range of art
history, but the meaning of the painting is still
unclear. The ambiguity of the work leaves the viewer
uncomfortable. There is desperation in the subjects'
faces and many unanswered questions, such as where the
fires are coming from, and what they have to do with the
flood. The raging waters seem incidental, yet the fear is
palpable, revealed through the faces rather than the
actual flood. At one time, there was a hand in the upper
right corner of the painting, which Adams later painted
out. The hand certainly represented a means of escape or
at least hope, heightening the ambiguity. Why did he
remove it? Was it perhaps a time of personal desperation?
Flash Flood was completed in 1976, the same year as the
later of the two self-portraits in the exhibit.
In Self-Portrait, 1976, Adams painted himself within a
painting, framed on a table surrounded by everyday
symbols of his life: pens, paintbrushes, coins, and an
apple. We also see a portion of an easel, with a frame on
it - also a symbol. Adams shows himself as just another
painting, just another symbol. He gazes at the viewer as
a man who "has seen it all." His expression is very
matter-of-fact, in contrast to the introspective
self-portrait of 1933.