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James Rosenquist
Pop Art Master
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.
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James Rosenquist
Pop Art Master
I remember the pure -- just the feeling of having things around in my studio that I liked, and I really didn't want to sell them, back in 1960 and '61. That was my environment that I made, and it didn't take much money to live, but I never thought that I could ever have enough money to get married, to own a car. Maybe a car, but not a house or anything like that. I know there was a question that I thought you were going to ask me about. Did I think that I would as successful as I am, or whatever? And I certainly didn't think so, because I didn't know how to qualify success. I didn't know. Success to me was just to be able to understand. Success was a very, very private matter, of having the wherewithal to very simply express an idea.
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Pete Rozelle
Pro Football Hall of Fame
I followed sports so closely. I just thought that athletes were tremendous. I watched their games -- we didn't have a television in those days, but I'd go to them. And if you liked sports, well then, outstanding athletes just became a natural role model for you. And you did not know much about them in those days. That's why I get very concerned when you have these instances that happen in sports, involving drugs, alcohol abuse by a player. Other incidents. Why, it's tough when you're supposed to be the guardian of the sport. You're repulsed by that, you know, you hate it. But people are people, and you just do the best you can and try to quiet that aspect.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
We'd heard about Mozambique -- Samora Machel, FRELIMO, the Front for Liberation in Mozambique. They declared independence, June the 25th, 1975. It gave a huge fillip to the struggle in South Africa. People now started using the word viva. "Viva! Viva!" Viva this, that and the other. In South Africa, they took over the Portuguese word, "A luta " they would say, " continua," (the struggle continues) from the Mozambiquan struggle -- became used in South Africa, and I wanted to see this country. The minute my foot touched the tarmac of the airport, I knew, this is where I'm going to be happy. It was the light, the vegetation, the people. That separation from a context that you'd grown up in, involuntary, that gets to you. I was back again. I was back in Africa. I was close to my country. The energy. The problems were my problems.
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Albie Sachs
Constitutional Court of South Africa
I was at the very first meeting in Cape Town, when one of the leaders of the African National Congress, named Johnson Ngwavela, voluntarily defied an order -- we called it "the banning order" -- put upon him, placed on him by the Minister of Justice, prohibiting him from attending any political gatherings. And he came into this little hall, and we all stood up and sang, and we sang freedom songs. It was a very emotional moment, and they called for volunteers to join the Defiance Campaign. And I was dying to volunteer. And my friend Wolfie Kodesh with me, he said, "Shhh, shhh. No, no, Albie, whites can't join." I said, "Why can't whites join? It's a non-racial struggle against racism." He says, "No, no, no, you can't." I remember holding onto the seat, clinging onto it to prevent myself from being hurled up with all the others rushing to sign that they wanted to be volunteers. And he said, "Look, I'll speak to some of the leaders and we'll see." And it was only in December, so that several months afterwards a small group of whites, four whites in Cape Town, were allowed by the organization to join. Looking back now, I can see, of course, it had to be a struggle by the oppressed black people, manifested under their own leadership, organized by themselves. And then whites could come in at a later stage to demonstrate that very point. But at the time it really hurt me as a young, anti-racist idealist.
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