Word: nemerov
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Young to Know. In 42 years with Manhattan's Russeks clothing store, David Nemerov rose from window dresser to president, and later chairman of the board. Last year he began to find the position "worrisome," and retired to Palm Beach to paint. Now 64, and one year old as an artist, Nemerov is happy and unworried. Last week a Manhattan gallery put on a show of his crude but luminous and intensely colorful pictures based mainly on French impressionism. To Nemerov's astonishment, 31 pictures were sold in the first four days at prices...
...Nemerov's formula is simple, although somewhat personal: "I never go to bed with less than six art books. I sleep like a top. I get up and see my florist; then I might paint florals until noon. I love color. Without color the world is too drab. Therefore God put flowers in it. Whether I paint a skyscraper or a pussycat I want to make it more interesting, but the vital thing is the flowers...
...explain his popularity? "I'm too young to know my customers," says Nemerov, and then gets right down to business: "As I analyze them, they are mostly people of means whose wives love beautiful homes and would prefer a colorful picture to Gauguin, for instance.*When a stranger walks in and pays for a painting of yours, life becomes wonderful indeed. You see, I couldn't bear to be a failure, not only in my own eyes but in the eyes of the world...
Certainly Nemerov's moral attitude does not make very engaging reading, although the fact that he has such an attitude is a pleasant change from most current fiction. But the morality play fortunately has to take a dramatic back-seat once Nemerov introduces his personal factors, a strangely appealing triangle...
...professor, the football player, and in between, the football player's girl, create a novelty which counteracts the trite moral issue. The girl is especially startling, one of those rare fictional characters whom you have met somewhere before. The intensity which Nemerov generates around these people can well pull the reader through the book in a single sitting, if he overcomes the slow start...