James Rosenquist Interview (page: 3 / 8) Pop Art Master	Print Interview

You've been called a "prairie-thinking man." I wonder if you could tell us what that means to you?

James Rosenquist: That quote is from Gene Swenson, "a prairie-thinking man." And poor Gene is dead now, he died in an auto crash. He wrote about me, but he really wrote about himself. He was a prairie person from Kansas City. He said he took his strength from Walt Whitman and the Bible. Well, that was Gene's words, so years later, people say, "You're a prairie-thinking man." It's really someone else's overlay of themselves on my work. So I don't know what that means!

But you do come from the prairie. Could you tell us about where you grew up?

James Rosenquist: I grew up in North Dakota and Minnesota. It was very flat, and peculiar things happen where it's flat. People try to make airplanes and go up in the air because we don't have mountains. You can see a long distance. In summers, I stayed with my grandfather, Ollie Hendrickson, in North Dakota, and you could watch people go to sleep by turning their lanterns out. There was no electricity, no telephone, and the communication would be by light or by waving. So peculiar things would happen. You could see things at a distance, like a mirage, and that kind of thing. So maybe that was what Gene Swenson was getting at. But I don't know what "prairie-thinking man" means.

What did your parents do when you were growing up?

James Rosenquist: Well, when my mother was pregnant with me, she was working for a propeller factory, and they were carving wooden propellers, so I was sort of propelled into space. I was born in the Deaconess Hospital in Grand Forks, North Dakota, which is now the Happy Dragon Chinese restaurant. So I can never go back there, I can't go back where I came from. My father was a flyer, and my mother was a flyer, and then the Great Depression came along and those things were put aside. My father worked in the aircraft industry the rest of his career, all during the war and then afterwards, after the war. I grew up between North Dakota and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

What was it like there, during the Great Depression?

James Rosenquist: Well, the Depression was felt a little later. You know, it took off in 1929, but people really didn't feel it until the '30s. But people in the country always had things to eat. The local chamber of commerce would have things like coffee day, or watermelon week, or something. And they would have these food festivals, so people would eat a lot of watermelon, a lot of pancakes. One time there was a pancake festival, and the first prize for eating all the pancakes was a giant pancake. And a fist fight broke out with the winner, because he didn't like that, getting just a bigger pancake. There was no money, there was nothing to get, so people ate.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. When I was a little boy, I could draw, I had a natural talent for drawing. And I'd amuse myself by unrolling rolls of wall paper, and started drawing on the wall paper from left to right, and I would just do a narration of something, and I would just keep rolling it up, and keep on drawing. I was an only child, so I entertained myself like that. And I made a lot of model airplanes and things out of clay, and all kinds of sorts of things. Into World War II I did that. Then my mother and father and I -- we traveled around a great deal -- and at one point, in 1942, we lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, right near the Minneapolis Art Institute. I was a little kid, and I would sneak into the museum and look around. And in one room, they had all these dead people in there that weren't buried. I ran home to my mother, and I said, "Mama! It's all these dead people in this room, and they're not underground!" It was Egyptian mummies. Then, during the war, we moved to Ohio. My father was working at Wright Patterson Field. And I saw an exhibition in Ohio in a museum -- I think it was in Dayton -- of a shrunken head, a live bird, and a painting. And I thought, "What? Why?" This was in an art museum. It seemed like a very avant-garde -- I didn't know what that meant then, but it did seem very interesting, why they would have a live bird, a shrunken head and a beautiful painting. Then in 1948, I did some watercolors of sunsets in Minneapolis. And I won a four-day scholastic scholarship to art school, which meant going for four Saturdays. And I was given the best eraser, the best pencil, the best piece of charcoal. And I never realized that some of the finest drawing in the museums of the world are really done with burnt wood on rag paper. The burnt wood is the charcoal. So, my teacher said -- I was drawing realistically -- and they said, "Don't you ever think abstractly?" I said no. "Have you ever heard of French non-objective painting?" Hunh-unh. "Have you ever heard of Jack the Dripper?" Nope. That was Jackson Pollack.

Did you always want to be an artist?

James Rosenquist: No. At one point, I went to see my father and I flew to Los Angeles, in 1951, on TWA, on an old Constellation airplane, and I really thought I would like to raise cattle. I wanted to be a cattle rancher. I thought that was interesting.

What changed?

James Rosenquist: Well, because I could draw well...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. At that time, if a person could draw, realistically, you draw someone's likeness... Well, fine art was far, far away. I mean it was a distant thing that remained in Europe somewhere, or the Far East. It had nothing to do with America. I mean, to me that was some very distant thing. And the only relation to art could be, say, magazine illustration, or working for television, or fashion illustration for a newspaper, or something like that. I met an artist in Minneapolis named Cameron Booth, who was always about ten years older than the year. So he was in the Great War -- World War I. He was gassed in World War I, stayed in Paris after the war, studied with a number of people in Paris and in Germany, and I met him. He could see that I knew how to draw -- I met him at the University of Minnesota -- and he said, "Why don't you get out of town quick? Go to New York, and study with Hans Hofmann." But Hans Hofmann wasn't available. So until that time, I got a job. I think I was 17 years old or 18. I got a job painting Phillips 66 emblems for a commercial painting company all through the Midwest. I traveled around in a truck and painted these emblems alone. I was all alone. All over, like a gypsy painter, all through the Midwest. I mean, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, all around that area.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

After that I tried painting for General Outdoor Advertising in Minneapolis. I managed to get a job there. I worked, I don't know, some number of months until I was laid off. Saved enough money.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I tried for a scholarship at the Art Students League by sending in drawings. And they wrote me a letter: "Dear James, we are happy to announce that we will give you one year's free schooling at the Art Students League." And I found myself in New York in the fall of 1955 with $350 bucks in my pocket and a room at the YMCA. I checked in to the Art Students League, and I studied with old-timers there -- Edwin Dickinson, George Grosz, Morris Kantor, Vaclav Vytlacil, all those old boys there. That was really an introduction to a private art which was fine art. Where drawing and painting could be applied to advertising, and to whatever, television, whatever, but a really private gesture would be -- a secret, private gesture -- would be your own idea, your own compositions that you enjoyed yourself. And to do something, to paint something or draw something or do something, to prove to oneself that you actually had the idea, would seem to be the important. Otherwise, the idea remained a concept, and no one could understand what you were thinking. So I think it was really like -- not a self-analysis -- but it's really thinking you have some strange, unusual idea and can talk about it and talk about it, but it doesn't mean anything unless you actually can see something physical about that. So that's what that meant to me at that time.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

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