Brightest Young Things

James Rosenquist is not only one of the most important American painters of the last hundred years: he is also a damn fine storyteller. Often times, hearing the back-story behind an iconic piece of work can dilute it, or humanize the artist in ways that the viewer hadn’t anticipated (or appreciated.) Reading Rosenquist’s new book “Painting Below Zero” I was struck by how much I enjoyed having him unravel the dense layers of his work, but even more so, hearing about the experiences in his life that form the ever shifting foundation of his art.

Delivered without pretense (a complete and utter shock for an artist memoir) the story of a humble billboard painter who became drinking buddies with some of the most important thinkers of the sixties, and soon saw his enormous paintings sell for millions, is enthralling.

James was kind enough to talk with us about his book and life and anything else that slipped between the cracks a few days before his visit to DC this evening. His responses often reminded me that I am not nearly as funny or witty as I might imagine (and he saw fit to not always answer my question but rather replace it with a better answer) but that being true to yourself and trusting in your skills will see you through:

(Following an awkward sequence where I try to explain my intention to start with a few “softball” questions and James replies back quizzically with “mothballs?” and finally “I don’t know what the hell that is so shoot,” we begin.)

BYT: Let’s cut to the chase – who has (or had) the biggest ego of the Pop artists? You can include yourself.

JR: Holy moley, wait a minute, I don’t think any of them. Listen to me and I’ll tell you why. Because Pop Artists that I knew, and usually American artists, at the beginning are very hopeful for each other. So that when Bob Indiana told me they saw this dirty old collage on Park Avenue in this big fat place and we were like “wow, it was Rauschenberg’s work” we went out and had a drink and celebrated at his good fortune. Why? Because if he could sell something then maybe someday we could. You see? On the contrary as I remember, the European artists there was a lot of backbiting. Always putting each other down. But the American artists didn’t. I don’t know if that is an ego or not but ever artists has an ego that allows them to work. You gotta have the chutzpah or something to start of to do something but as far as competition goes I always felt the other artists were like sparring partners in a gymnasium.

BYT: I love the story in your book about Jasper Johns, once he finally had a little bit of money showing up in the suit and Jaguar.

JR: (Laughs) yeah, he showed up in a white Jaguar and a white fur coat I think it was. A full-length white coat.

(James imitates Jasper’s voice) “Would you like a ride?”

So I said “yes” and he took me to the subway and dropped me off.

BYT: Speaking of the Pop movement – history has lumped you in there but how much a part of the movement did you feel at the time and in retrospect how much do you feel a part of it now?

JR: Well listen, everyone is an individual and everyone has their own background. So… in the book it tells how I got started in my commercial art experience that made me develop a new sort of style of painting, because painting in all of history has been like looking in an aperture out our window. My work, I wanted the imagery so huge that it was almost in the back of one’s mind that it was almost of that objective, therefore I called the book “Painting Below Zero” that meant trying to get beyond non-objectivity, yet still introducing these nothing images. And the nothing images were very of a very contemporary variety. That’s what I did.

Now the other artists; Roy Lichtenstein was a military veteran, very nice, a different kind of person. I liked him and he was friendly and he had taught art history for a long time so he knew all about art history and that led him to doing these, in the beginning I thought were sardonic comic strips. Then the time passed and they became much more creative and near the end of his life I said, “Roy, I didn’t know you were a colorist.” He was putting together, for an artist, very unusual color combinations.

And Andy, his life and work seemed to be about the acceleration of life or speed. Everything was slapdash and fast. I watched him paint one time and he just, he… it was like the canvas was a hotplate. He would touch it and pull back, scribble scribble and pull back again, and it was like he really didn’t want to have his hand in it so he did silkscreens a lot and I think his portraits are his best work.

Then Oldenburg, he… I went to the movies with him and we saw “The Incredible Shrinking Man.” Early on, and it was about this person who shrunk and everything around him was huge and I remember Oldenburg laughing and laughing and then he started doing huge, soft sculptures. These huge, soft sculptures and I just thought it was a great idea.

So everyone has his or her own trail - so to speak. So why do people call us “Pop Artists?” They are all so very different, like the Abstract Expressionists, Newman, and Pollock, Still, Kline all so different yet they call them “Abstract Expressionists.” Why people lump a bunch of energetic people together for a title, a name – same with “Pop Artists” called as such by Lawrence Alloway to identify as a group but my goodness, they are all very very very different.

BYT: Do you think that is propagated by the media or more so by the dealers?

JR: It’s both of them.

BYT: I wanted to mention, as I have the chance, I always enjoyed the graphic nature of your paintings and in particular the dedication to craft that is so evident.

JR: Yes! As an outdoor sign painter in Times Square I had to paint things good enough to sell or I would get fired! (Laughs) No, I remember painting a whole bunch of boards for the movie Ben Hur and Jake Stark comes along and says (imitating voice) “That nose! That nose is too long there!”

But I wasn’t supposed to talk to management, I’m in the union, so he used to rattle 25 cent pieces in his hand and rolls of ‘em and I would say “give me some of those quarters” and he would laugh. I mean it was illegal to talk to people in management. I had people looking over my shoulder for every single day while painting Elizabeth Taylor, or cigarettes, or movie stars – everything.

BYT: The part to me that really informs the art – a lot of it is in the planning and plotting. That is what I really liked about seeing the collages, the studies that you included in the book.

JR: The Guggenheim book?

BYT: Yes, yes.

JR: Well listen, I had a scholarship to art students league initially and also a four-day scholarship as a teen in Indianapolis so my drawing ability I brought with me as a sign painter. So when I would do a 30-foot face of Jean Simmons or Burt Lancaster – I brought the bone structure in their head from the photo into the image. Where as other (sign) artists made them look like cardboard cutouts.

BYT: In a way would you say you were a billboard painter because you are an artist or are you an artist because you were a billboard painter?

JR: No no – I was a billboard painter to learn how to paint the Sistine Chapel. That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to paint murals. That’s why I was lucky to get the job painting billboards. The technique. I could paint the Sistine Chapel but I wouldn’t have the content – but that’s a whole other matter. But the technique, I could paint any damn thing. I could paint something 350 feet high seven times. I could do that with simple tools.

BYT: Reading about making the initial study collages was amazing.

JR: What that is... they would give me a bunch of material and ask me to make it all the right size on the sign for the Mayfield Theater. Well, then I would get images of all different sizes and I would have to scale everything and plan and because of that it became a collage.

BYT: You are the only artist I have heard talk about the ability to recreate a piece – based on having those studies.

JR: I don’t know – the abstract expressionists just attacked the painting. You can’t do a preparatory sketch. I have to do that to do a large thing.

BYT: In the same regard I enjoyed reading about the “Baby Jimmy” days, watching New York play out below your scaffold.

JR: (Laughs)

BYT: How much do you think that played into your segmentation of images that form your work with multiple activities happening at once?

JR: Well, in the 50s Times Square was pretty empty – pretty different from today. It was so empty except matinee days when the ladies would come with their fur coats and we spilled paint on their coats – but otherwise it was empty. But it was interesting. The Astor Hotel was there. Frank Sinatra would come in; I would see Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and Thelonious Monk for a minute – my hero! My heroes at that time were jazz musicians, not artists. They were incredibly talented and egoless.

BYT: You clearly live a life of creativity that never turns itself off – perhaps my favorite instance of this is your paper suit – what has been your favorite construction that wasn’t a painting or something that wasn’t even intended to be art?

JR: (Laughs) Well, basically, I didn’t have any money and when I quit billboard painting and started doing my own painting all I had was my old dirty paint clothes and then there would be a big opening at the old Jewish Museum for Rauschenberg or Jasper Johns or somebody and I would go to Silver’s Tuxedo and rent a tux and then I would bring it back. But I never had any suits or any dressy clothes at all. So then I called the Kleenex paper company and asked, “Would you make me a paper suit?” They said no but that I could have all the paper that I wanted. This is when they were making ladies’ underwear out of paper.

So they gave me all this paper, and I had Horst, a designer, make a beautiful suit out of it. When I would shake someone’s hand it would go (makes horrible crinkling noise and then laughs.) That was one thing and before that I would go and buy a used tuxedo and on the back I rolled a car tire over it with paint so it looked like I had been run over and I would rip the damn tux. I wore that to Paris for a show at the Galle Palais and the Minister of Culture, Michele Guy said (imitating voice) “Rosenquist! Looks like he is smoking in ze morning.”

Then I would go to an opening and I would make a bow tie out of steel wool or something weird so that these well-dressed ladies would look at me and go “what the hell is this?”

BYT: Was a lot of this just to keep your self amused?

JR: Yeah – it was just… fun! It was a costume.

BYT: I appreciated that aspect of the book in general.

JR: Thank you. I am sort of amazed as I thought my life was sort of ordinary.

BYT: “Growth Plan” has always disturbed me terribly and I could never put my finger on it and at times I simply chalked it up to my associations with your work and then seeing this assembly that is so straightforward but then again – not straightforward at all. Reading the story of the murder you witnessed isn’t evident in the image but your uncomfortable feelings seem to permeate the canvas.

JR: It was… well.. Then someone in Japan bought the painting for completely different reasons and possible associations with populations. I usually have like 1-10 ideas that finally get me off the chair to make some artwork. But they all have a clear rationale. Now someone will criticize it for something else but when I tell them the thought they are all “yeah, yeah, I get it.” but otherwise, people can lay things on it that have nothing to do with my ideas.

BYT: Well the doll paintings in particular were like that, where I couldn’t fully figure out the association with the feelings it generated but then reading…

JR: Right, about the AIDS…

BYT: And especially as a father and having your new daughter and the world that you have brought this child into…

JR: How can they have a love affair without making a business arrangement out of it?

BYT: You did a nice job in telling the stories. In the “keeping yourself interested” vein, I loved the notes on the behind the scenes aspect of incorporating two of the clients into your Four Seasons piece. In your past work – what has been your favorite instance of doing that?

JR: I have done maybe 15 commissions… you see, people want something – they want the “best.” But they don’t know what they want. They have a commission for a place but they don’t have a clue as to what they want but they want the “best!” They don’t know what it is. After a while I ask them do you have any thoughts at all? Usually they are pretty slick.

BYT: In all of the tragedies throughout your life (near death car crash for his wife and son and very recently his studio burning to the ground) – has there really ever been anything worse then the painter restoring your slashed piece (famously by “cultural terrorists” along with a Lichtenstein piece belonging to dealer Leo Castelli) deciding to paint a sailboat on it as a cover up?

JR: That one was really nothing. It didn’t bother me at all.

BYT: I am obviously more amused with it then you are.

JR: (Laughs) That someone will think that they are doing the right thing.

BYT: It’s such a huge leap to add any additional imagery to begin with.

JR: Yeah but I have had some mechanical devices in my paintings totally ruined by someone thinking they are going to make it better and that is very peculiar. To use their own hands and reconstruct a picture…

BYT: My Father In-Law is an engineer so my entire house is like that – it’s terrible – I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone.

JR: Oh wow.

BYT: Thank you again for your time. We are looking forward to having you up here at the Corcoran.

JR: That will be fun. Thank you very much – ciao!

James Rosenquist appears at the Corcoran tonight at 7:00.