Hi everybody. It's great to see such a
fabulous crowd. You get to loosen your
ties if you're buttoned up, because
it's warm in here tonight. I'm Virginia
Mecklenburg, one of the senior curators
here at SAAM. It's my very great pleasure to
welcome you tonight to the Clarice Smith
Distinguished Artist Lecture for 2007.
Each fall, through the generous support
of Clarice Smith, the Smithsonian
American Art Museum presents three
distinguished lectures. One by a noted
scholar, one by an eminent critic, and one
by an artist whose work challenges,
energizes, and in the case of Jim
Rosenquist might amuse us as well.
- laughter -
That was him.
1962 was a great year for Jim Rosenquist.
He had his first solo exhibition at
Green Gallery in New York and he was
featured in a show called 'The
International Exhibition of New Realist'
at Sydney Janice's elegant gallery on
57th Street. In retrospect it
seems appropriate that the New Realist show
opened on Halloween night. Instead of
active surfaces and intense
brush strokes of the abstract
expressionist canvases that Janet's
usually showed, he was the leading dealer
for most of the Abstract Expressionists.
People who came on opening night saw a
comic strip picture of a fighter plane
by Roy Lichtenstein, a lawnmower - one of
the old push lawn mowers - that Jim Dine
put on a pedestal in front of a
half-finished canvas, and an oversized
painting showing the grill of an
automobile hovering over a field of
Franco-American spaghetti by Jim
Rosenquist, who gave it the intriguing
title 'I Love You with My Fork.' So much
for Mark Rothko's ideas about art being
tragic and timeless. Jim's work is
provocative and sometimes enigmatic.
Irony, and humor, and beauty are all
characteristics. Sometimes he does
flowers, women's faces, but in all there
are unexpected relationships among
things that demand that we
reevaluate what we see and think and
know. Jim is a busy man so we are
especially pleased that he could be here
tonight. He has had one-man exhibitions,
actually usually three or four, almost
every year since The New Realist Show in
the early 1960s, and major museum
exhibitions in New York, Washington,
Stockholm, Cologne, Amsterdam, London,
Bilbao, Berlin, if you have a list of the
world capitals we could go on and on.
Some of you who are longtime friends
will remember the retrospective that we
did here in 1987. More recently the
Guggenheim Museum organized a 40 year
retrospective that was one of the most
exciting shows to hit the international
circuit for 20 years and coincidentally
provided the opportunity
for SAAM to acquire the painting
'Industrial Cottage' a magnificent 1977
canvas that you may have seen and if not,
I recommend you go see hanging on the
third floor of the gallery. A couple of
housekeeping notes. Please turn off cell
phones, blackberries, all those little
things that beep in the night. We are
webcasting tonight's program, so please
be sure to use a microphone. Oh, I hear
those little sounds from cell phones.
Please be sure to use
a microphone if you have comments or
questions at the end of Jim's talk.
Then, I hope you'll join us afterwards in
our new, brand new, beautiful Kogod
Courtyard for a reception. Now it's a
privilege to present Jim Rosenquist, who
tells us that fine art is not a career.
- applause -
Good evening. Can anybody hear me?
Oh, you could. Well, I want to thank Clarice
Smith for having me - she's sitting
right there, in the front row,
- applause -
and the director, Betsy Broun, and Nona Martin whose has
been showing me around here today.
I haven't been here much since I had an
appointment from Jimmy Carter to serve
on the Council for the National
Endowment for the Arts. I was
surprised to find we had so few friends
of the Arts in Washington, but we did
have friends. Claiborne Pell, John
Brademas, Senator Javits, Livingston,
Biddle and others. They were
wonderful city-ates wonderful, wonderful
people. It was a learning experience for
me. I was asked about the title of my
talk and so I said, 'Fine Art Is Not a Career.'
Why? Because you may be such an artistic
genius, though no one might buy your work
until 15 years after you're gone. Look at
Vincent Van Gogh. Artists have a
reputation of appearing, working like
hell, giving it all the way and
disappearing. That goes on and on.
When I arrived in New York in 1955
with a scholarship to the Art
Students League, I had letters of
introduction from my teacher Cameron
Booth, a World War One veteran. He was
older than a year and he was gassed in
World War One, but alas he was
broadsided in his Lincoln when he was 92.
He lived quite a time. When I arrived
in New York, Cameron gave me letters of
introduction to maybe a dozen very very
nice people, who were artists. They
did commercial art to make a living.
They lived very well. I used
to go to parties with George Grosz.
I'd say "George" I mean I didn't have
probably a penny in my pocket I was
literally a starving artist.
He used to take me to get
something to eat. I said, "George
this place, this Sutton place
is a beautiful apartment." He goes, "Yeah, it costs
three hundred fifty dollars a month."
Then, we go to another penthouse apartment
near Columbus Circle. I said, "George, this
is beautiful. How much is this?" "Oh, It's very expensive
it's 400 a month." It blew me
away because later on I had a Fibrum
apartment on the Upper East Side for 31
bucks a month. The cops
at that time, for the terrible temper of the
times, the cops were making 85 bucks a
week, and striking for a 100 a week.
My mother and father who were aviators in
1931 at the Grand Forks, North Dakota
Airport, my uncle Hedberg had been in the
Army Air Corps from '29 to '32, and he got
out of the Army Air Corps and he
and my father were going to start an
international airline. What was that?
Merely a mail route from Grand Forks to
Winnipeg. Poor Albert, who I was named after,
crashed flying a senator somewhere in a
rainstorm. The depression came into the
Midwest, that was the end of my parents
flying career, but my father remained in
aviation as a A&E inspector until
he died. He inspected bombers and W2s
and so on. I was an only child and
living through the latter part of the
Depression the beginning W2 was a
helter skelter experience. I missed a
lot of school. I think this
pertains to my career, but I missed a
lot of school and I entertain myself by
drawing in hotel rooms. We finally
settled in Minnesota. My mother
said "You're always drawing, maybe you can
get a job doing something like that."
I saw an ad the paper 'Wanted: Artists Sign
Painter.' I met a guy, WG Fisher, who wore,
still wore his old army clothes.
I got a job for a dollar sixty an hour
painting Phillips 66 emblems in North
Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota. His crew was rough. They were
jail, jail birds.
I was a teenager. They were 29 so they
didn't beat me up, but they kept buying
me a lot of drinks. I had a hard time
drinking. I mean it was a very strange
experience, because people that have been
in jail are very peculiar people.
I don't want to get into that too much.
- laughter -
After this job experience, I
met Cameron Booth, an
amazing draftsman and colorist. In his
class I would draw about eight charcoal
portraits a day. I was born, I think,
with the ability to draw, but Cameron
Booth's emphasis was - how do you make a
picture? How do you make a plastic
picture? After the golden mean rectangle,
after cubism, how do you make an
exciting picture out of a simple piece
of rectangular canvas? That's what I
was interested in. He told me, "Minneapolis,
there's nothing for you in Minneapolis. Go
study with Hans Hofmann" - his teacher
that he studied with in Munich.
Hans left New York for Provincetown so I sent
my drawing for the Art Students League,
and I won an out of town
scholarship in 1955 for one year. I was
fortunate, I studied with George Grosz,
Edwin Dickinson, Robert Beverly, Hill Hail,
and Morris Cantor. They were all amazing
people. Edwin Dickinson was a little
fellow with granny glasses and he said,
"The reason why artists have such difficulty
drawing and painting in Manhattan is
that Manhattan isn't situated exactly
north and south, and the light coming in
the window throws them off."
- laughter -
He was great, he was actually great. After the Art Students
League I went to, the welfare
award of the Roosevelt Hospital with
pneumonia. I got out of there in two
weeks and my friend Ray Donarski said,
"I know a great job." He said, "There's these
people who are very wealthy. You can live
there, be a chauffeur, a bartender. Let's
go try to see what it is." We go
up to Irvington on the Hudson in
Westchester and it was Roland Stearns,
whose father started Bear Stearns Stock
Brokerage. Roland, I liked Roland,
because he wasn't a spoiled brat. He
enlisted in the Navy, saw action in the
South Pacific, and I lived in luxury,
there. I didn't make much money, but it was
a very, very beautiful place to live,
but it wasn't my place. I had to get out of
there, because I thought it's not my
house. So anyway I left the Stearn's and I
transferred into the International
Sign and Pictorial Painters Union, Local
230. It turned out to be some
experience. I was a union painter, in a
labor union, painting pictures of movie
stars, whiskey bottles, cigarettes,
everything imaginable and good enough to
sell a product, otherwise I'd get fired.
I worked along - ha, ha, oh boy -
- laughter -
I spilt, I spilt, well in one day I
was in the middle of Times Square
starting the Astor Victoria Theatre which is
395 feet wide. I did the Castro Convertible
sign on 47th Street, and another sign.
A guy came up to me and said, "What
are you doing?" He was from the United
Press. I said, "Man, these are snake oil
advertisements man, but I'm really an
artist. I paint little abstractions and
I'm trying to save money to make them
bigger." He wrote an article, "Billboard
Michelangelo Spills Paint on Tourists Far Below."
- laughter -
I had a lot of strange things.
I worked alongside New York communists
from the 30s, you know, the old boys,
and my fellow workers.
I go to my first union meeting and they're
sitting in the corner and I go, "Hey Jimmy,
come over here and have a beer with us,
come on over." So I go have a beer with them.
It was Gus and Harry, and I get up to go to
the toilet, and the head of the Union
comes out, Italian, he's a little guy, John
Scotte, and he says, "James see that side of the room
over there?" I said, "Yes." He says, "It's all red you
get a little red on you, it don't wipe off."
I said, "John, these are my fellow workers."
He said, "I told you" only once, that's all.
That was, you know, during the
McCarthy Era.
Anyhow, working at Times Square,
it was a nice place to work.
The Astor Hotel was still there, where Frank
Sinatra would come in. I learned a lot of
tips from old painters.
They'd say, "Hey kid, I'll show you something." I'd say,
"Ok" and they'd show me something. They
say that to other young guys and
they say, "I know it already, get out of here."
They'd never show him anything
again. In 1959 two guys got killed
falling off signs. AV Marco fell off
Klien's department store, another guy
fell off a Budweiser signed in New
Jersey. I asked for a large raise of
30 bucks a week, and I quit.
I had met artists living in New
York and Ellsworth Kelly told me about a
studio in Coenties Slip for 45
bucks a month. I didn't fix it up, I moved
in and I started thinking about what
could I do. I thought I could devise
a painting where fragments of
generic images I would paint so large
that the largest would be identified
last, yet the space would fall forward
out of the picture plane instead of
receding out an aperture as it has done
for centuries. Even in the Louvre with
the great paintings they're all, you're
looking out an aperture. My images were
falling in your face. It was so I thought
I would do something new; therefore, I
thought I could make a mysterious
painting. There was no such thing as Pop
Art then, anything like that. One other
billboard thing. In Brooklyn I was
working for General Outdoor Advertising
and the boss said, "James I want you to
paint the Schenley whiskey bottle two
stories tall at top of a candy store."
I painted it. The next day, two days later, he said,
"James, there's another one." I did another one,
and another one, and another one, and
another one. I wanted to stop painting
over a hundred and forty lousy Schenley
whiskey bottles. On the label,
I knew how to paint them pretty well by then.
On the label it said this spirit
is made from the finest grains and so on.
Instead after a while I wrote "Mary had a
little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow." - laughter -
You couldn't tell, I was just going bananas.
So you couldn't tell from the street, but
that was except when the workers take
the signs down, they go,
"We are going to lose our jobs. We're losing, this kid is
going to make us lose our jobs."
That made me think about
advertising, which is integral to the
capitalist system, but my
experience really was, painting all this
commercial art is really, I was involved
with the color and the texture of these
enlarged things I was painting.
Not really the commercial
side of it.
I moved into this loft and I started painting. I never solicited
my work, ever. One day it was down
by Wall Street, it was on Coenties Slip right by the
battery. One day I looked out the window
and there was Dick Bellamy, Henry Galeseller,
and Ivan Karp sitting on a curb
smoking cigars. Bellamy had a gallery on
57th Street. Henry was head,
he was head of the 20th century wing of the
Metropolitan Museum. Ivan Karp worked with
Leo Castelli. After a while there was a
knock on the door. They came in, Dick
Bellamy looked around and said,
"There's something, finally, I can show in my new
gallery." He asked if I would like to
be in his gallery and then Karp said,
"Don't sign any papers." Henry danced around in
the studio looking at everything.
Dick started bringing people down to my
studio - Roberts Skull, the Tremains, and
others. Leo Castelli came down with Count
Panza. Panza bought three paintings even
though Leo wasn't my dealer. By the
time my show opened in February '62 it was
sold out. Prices ranged from 350 to
1,100 dollars a picture. I was happy
and I felt lucky. My next show was at
the Museum of Modern Art.
It was Dorothy Miller's '16
Americans' show a 1963.
One of these paintings in my first show
I sold to 450 buck. It was sold,
auctioned off, last week for a million
and a half. My next show at 64 was a
sellout. Dick Bellamy had personal and
financial problems and kept telling me he
was planning to close the gallery.
It was not financial, but it was
his own personal problems.
On a plane somewhere, sitting next to Leo
Castelli, Leo said, "Jim if you ever think
of leaving Dick please consider me first."
At the end of '64 I joined Leo's gallery
and my first show with Leo was with
Leo's ex-wife, Ileana Sonnabend, in Paris.
I thought they were in collaboration, but
I really didn't know. I even thought
maybe I was paying his alimony or
something. That's not nice, I shouldn't say that.
In 1965 I had my first show with Leo at 4 East
77th street and showed a wraparound penny called,
'F-1, 11.' It sold for about fifty thousand
bucks. A few years ago, it was resold to the
Museum of Modern Art for about 5 million.
Paris was, in '64, was very interesting. Why?
Because so many great artists were still
alive - Picasso, Miró, Giacometti. They came,
Giacometti, Miró, Polyakov
came to my, didn't get the met them, but
they came to my show. They were around.
It was amazing that they were alive and at
my opening Edward Giguere claimed I
was a surrealist. He was inviting me to
the cafe Venus as a surrealist.
Pierre Alechinsky, you probably know his
work, he said no, I was a Russian realist
and little Pierre knocked Edward
knocked him right in the jaw, knocked him
on the floor and I thought, "Wow
this Paris is incredible. They hit
somebody for an aesthetic reason over there."
- laughter -
That's really crazy. I heard that
Giacometti saw my work he said to Ileana ,
"It's not painting. It may be some
kind of poetry, but it's not painting."
It is good enough for me. The reason
I did F1- 11 painting was a
wraparound painting in the whole, it covered
all the walls. The ideas were ideas from
peripheral vision to paying income taxes
for war weapons that seemed to be obsolete
before being used, which kept
middle-class America employed. Later
on it was highly criticized and written
about as an anti-vietnam picture. At the
time I was 32 years old and I had my
first retrospective show at the
National Gallery of Canada organized by
Braden Smith. They bought two works then.
I stayed with Leo Castelli for over 30
years until he died. I had many shows
with him practically every, more
than one every year by different places.
I want to tell you about some art
collector experiences I've had, because an art
collector comes along you don't know
them. They don't know you. They want to
buy something of you, some piece of you,
some kind of thing and it's very
awkward a lot of the time. When I was on Coenties
Slip I lived in a big one room loft.
My dear Dick called and said, "James
the Mayor's are here from Chicago and
they want to buy a painting." I said,
"Dick, I got pneumonia or something.
I'll tell you what I'll do. I might be laying
on the couch I'll hang a
painting on the wall and
I'll leave the door open. You can open the
door and look at the painting, but I won't
be able to receive you really."
He said, "Okay I'll try that." Two hours
later, there is a knock on the door. Just then a
big wharf rat, as big as a little kitty,
sticks his head up, right the middle of the
floor, and they're very silent. They
don't make any sounds. I'm laying on the
couch, there's a rat. They open up the
door, they see me, they see the rat, and
see the painting and slam the door, and they say,
"We'll take it." - laughter -
They didn't take the rat, they took my painting.
- laughter -
Then at Leo's gallery I showed this wraparound painting
called 'Horse Blinders.' It covered
all of the walls. Dr. Ludwig from Cologne
came in at nine o'clock in the morning and
said, "I must have this, how much is this?"
There was only one wall up at the time. I say to Leo, "look,
tell him to come back tomorrow and maybe we
can figure out of price."
Dick says. "Well your F1-11
painting was 50 grand, let's ask 70 grand."
He came back right away the next morning.
He's says, "What is the cost here for
this painting?" Leo said, "Seventy
thousand dollars." He goes, "Phhhh."
Just then the phone rang. I think it was Philip Johnson, and
he was interested in buying it.
Here I am with this guy, I don't know him from
anywhere, I said, "you know Dr. our
Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel
just sold our offshore oil rights in
California for 70 million dollars and
they have some - I didn't know what I was saying - and they have some
ducks covered with oil out there with
oil spills. I said, "you can't make a duck
with 70 million dollars." Leo came back
just right on the button says, "yes Dr. we are
the ducks." Then when he heard Phillip
was interested he would put his auction
sign down. It's mine, yep. He
bought it, it's now in the Ludwig
Collection, in Columbus.
Among the early art collectors were
Robert Skull who owned the 120 taxi
cabs, Emily and Burton Tremaine,
Philip Johnson, Richard Brown Baker, and
Young Streep, who I just found out was
Meryl Streep's uncle. Curiosity, he's
dead now. He's been dead a long time.
The art world was very small in the
1960s. There were very few avant-garde
galleries. Leo Castelli, Sydney Janice,
Betty Parsons and the stable gallery, they
were about the best, I think. Leo Castelli's
mission was to get paintings to quality
collectors and people at a low price.
He would, if someone offered him a price
or something, and someone who like Philip
Johnson or someone else wanted it, he'd give
it to the other, the biggest
collector. The biggest and best for an
abstract painting in 1960 was about
seventeen to twenty thousand dollars,
including a David Smith sculpture, Rothko,
de Kooning, and so on. At the French &
Company Galleries, overnight they raised
the prices to 35,000, they doubled them to 35,000.
I remember having dinner with David Smith
in Chinatown and he said, "the church
group came in to buy, wanted to buy a big
sculpture." They said, "how much is it?"
He says, "thirty six thousand dollars."
He said, "they went into a huddle
and came out" they said, "our congregation has
been saving its pennies. Would you take
34 thousand?" He says, "I think that would be alright."
It had just changed overnight to
that price.
In 1971 my family suffered a terrible auto
crash in Tampa, Florida. I was
in mid-career about sixty thousand dollars
in debt, because I had a bad knee and
insurance policy. I was asked by Don
Saff at the University of South Florida's
graphics studio to make prints. Don is
sitting right there. He lives in this
neck of the woods now. He was very very
helpful, I was in a deep blue
depression. He said, "why don't you
come here to do something, get to work, get to work,
get over your worries." I did and I
did a portfolio of prints that
time and I managed to sell them to
an art dealer and slowly get out of a
financial problem.
I decided to move to Florida. I borrowed
money from Marian Goodman, Leo Castelli,
and Sid Felsen. I managed to buy property
in the Gulf of Mexico and build a house.
Later I build two airplane hangar style
buildings with 90 skylights. That space,
that large space, I painted large
commissions for the Guggenheim Deutsche
Bank Museum in Singapore and then Frank
Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
As you've heard, I've had a lot of retrospective
venues in Moscow, Spain twice, right here at '87,
to Whitney in '72 and '85, and the last one
was at the Guggenheim, at the Menil in
the Museum Fine Arts in Houston, here and in New
York and then Bilboa and then Germany.
I'm getting older and my life seems to,
I've never been so busy and lucky
because many of my fellow artists are
gone. I can't call them up for a rabbit
skin glue recipe.
I'm very happy to be here and see
you and I'm going to show some of my
work that I did, quickly. Then I'll
answer, if you have a question about anything.
I'll try to answer it, because I've been asked
just about everything. This is a
little painting called, I love this,
'Hey Let's Go for a Ride.' I did it
about 40 - use the microphone. What's that dear? We can't hear you. Hello?
That up to those guys up there. I did it about 45
years ago. That's the Ford spaghetti
picture. It's now in the Moderna Museet
in Stockholm. This is a painting, it's in the
Hirshhorn Museum, 'The Light That Won't
Fail Number One,' I think.
This is called 'Marilyn Monroe.' I never met, I saw her twice,
but I never met her. This is called 'Air
Hammer.' Where the impact is, the windows
are rolled down so there's no impact.
This is called 'Four Young Revolutionary Guys.'
This is called 'Capillary Action Number One,' I think.
Those canvases sticking out
from the picture plane painted the
same color as the background.
This is called, this is about 24 feet long, it's called,
A Lot To Like.'
This is called 'Vestigial Appendage.'
This is the painting that was on the wall
when the people slammed the door.
I sold it for 450 bucks and it's now in the
Julio Gonzalez Museum in Valencia.
This is called 'Toaster' and the metaphor for the
toaster is the two circle saw blades were
supposed to be the toast. It's a tough
morning. This is called 'Lanai.' It was owned
by John, the late John Powers. It still is
owned by him.
This is called 'Conveyor Belt' and it's all about nothing.
This is called 'Two 1959 People.'
It's in the Rose Museum in Brandeis.
This is called 'Tumbleweed's Chrome Plated Barbed Wire Tumbleweed.'
This is part of F1-11, one wall.
There I am as a young boy
sitting in the corner, you can see the
scale of the painting.
Here I am, this is called 'The Pinnacle Flamingo Capsule,'
being started, which is
now owned by the Basque Government, I
believe, in Bilbao, I think. I believe they own that.
This is an experiment of blended
colored panels, I think in 1970
sometime. This is a photograph by Claude
Picasso. Claude Picasso was
really an inspiring photographer.
I met him with John Franco Gordoni.
Then when Picasso died he really became
totally involved with the Fundación
Picasso. I think he stopped
taking pictures.
This is called 'Terrarium.' It's after a Zen Koan.
This is the painting that's here.
It's a little bleached out from this picture, a little
more vivid than that. The inspiration for
doing this, I was driving around Florida,
I saw a chain-linked fence around a
cemetery and on the chain-linked fence there
was a sign that says 'Mobile Home for Rent.'
This is a life-sized top of a car that's
supposed to be the ruby in her
engagement ring. She's promised all
these dirty dishes in the future.
This is called 'The Glass Wishes.' This is 'Star
Thief 17 by 46 with Painting' that's now
in the Ludwig Museum in Cologne.
This is a small painting called
'Chambers,' because on one
end of Chambers was the law and I was
the only door at the other end
of Chambers Street. An artist, I was the
doorknob on the other end. This is
called, "Dog Descending a Staircase.'
The male images is the dog, the female image is
the little baby doll and his
business is this steel milling company.
This is an abstract flower painting.
It was bought by Henry Racamier of Louis Vuitton.
Many years ago, in the 80s.
This is a 17 by 46 foot painting called 'Through the Eye of the Needle to the Anvil.'
This is a painting called 'The Masquerade of
the Military-industrial Complex Looking Down on an Insect World.'
What got me going about this was, remember
the Russians had a bunch of astronauts
up in space while the whole Russian
government was in total turmoil.
I think the astronauts wondered if
they were going to come back to earth.
If they even had the money to bring them back.
Anyway that was part of the idea
about this painting. This is called, 'Where the
Water Goes' about ecology. It is a sink
with stuff in a sink. The idea that
you throw, for a young boy or girl, that you
throw something away isn't really true, you
just move it somewhere else.
This is going from left to right, this is a huge
picture I did for the Deutsche
Bank in Berlin Guggenheim.
It's called 'The Swimmer in the Econo-Mist.'
This was three paintings, this is a
small end painting. There's
another forty foot painting that's part of the triptych.
This is called 'The Meteor Hits the Swimmer's Pillow.'
Why I did this? Because
in 1938 I was living in Atwater,
Minnesota and a fat lady about 15 miles
north of Atwater got hit, a meteorite
came through the a roof of her house, smashed
through, hit her on the hip, and went
through the floor, but it didn't kill her.
I thought about this all, for years
and years and years, and I thought, did I dream this?
Did this really happen? Low and
behold my dentist in Florida pulled up a
picture of her fat hip on his
computer. I couldn't. Anyway, there's
another abstract painting.
This is called 'The Stowaway Peers out at the Speed of Light.'
The reason I did
a number of speed of light pictures, this
is not one of them, this is another one.
A 17 by 46 called 'Joystick.' The speed of
light pictures, when Einstein said that
When the spectator and the traveler are looking
at the same thing, sees it
differently it appears different, it's misshapen
or changed. When I would show
paintings I was always surprised
as who like what. I thought some of the
smarter collectors turned out to be kind
of dumb. Then some what I thought
people who didn't know anything really
could see things. As always who liked
what was always very peculiar.
I thought what you see is not what
you get, what you're getting is all
the archaeology of my experience
in the underpainting. This is finally
what you see. That's in the speed of
light pictures. Here's another small painting.
This painting is called 'The Xenophobic Movie Director or Our Foreign Policy.'
In the light bulb, in Arabic, it says
"alhamd lillahi, alimina."
That's being knocked out of a rough of numbers
by a golfer. That means, what I just
said, means 'praise God the creator of
our worlds.' Another abstract painting.
Another one, and another one.
Here's a painting I did for Ferrari. I'm friends
with the crew chief John Todt, the
formula one crew chief. He asked me to do
a picture for them. It has, in the center of
it there's an acrylic rod maybe a foot
long. In the back of the painting, there's a
little checkerboard flag. That pops
right to the front of the piece of
acrylic rod, like a fiber optic.
All the race car drivers told me
that they look way off in the distance
to it because they're going to be there
in the next second, or sooner. Here's a
painting in my current show called 'The Hole in the Center of the Clock.'
Here's a small painting called 'Idea 2:50AM,' I think that it's called.
Here's a little sculpture. I drilled holes in a
light bulb, put a whiskey cork in the
bottom with a little light and two
pencils sticking in it, and the light.
It's a little thing. Here's another time
painting, I think it's called, 'Zone.'
Here's another one called 'Time Blade.'
Steve Wynn in Las Vegas bought this painting.
Here's another one. Way up at the
top of the middle of the painting is a
little small clock that's
laying down with laser beam
hands. The experiment is that
when you extend the length of the
particular the minute hand and the
little laser dot shows up at a distance
it moves very fast. If you stand near
the clock it takes one minute for that
hand to go around. But if that
that little hand, arm, of that clock was
longer, a mile longer or two miles, it would
be racing around in a circle. It's an
idea about speed and space and being
dislocated from or in, well it's hard to explain.
It's like in space being in contact with the
earth or not being in contact - does
your life change? Is there a change?
This is a 23 foot painting called 'Time Blades Learning Curves.'
That's it. It's enough.
- applause -
Anybody have a question?
Over there.
I'd like to ask, if I may, about some of
your adventures with materials. We have a
group of conservation students here
tonight. We'd like to know if you've
had any adventures where the materials
have changed so much that you've wanted
to withdraw the painting? You mean art
materials? Art materials or have our
conservation colleagues treated you well?
Have we behaved? Have we done anything
such as varnish a work that shouldn't
be varnished that you regret? Did
everybody hear that one? Yeah.
Okay I had a lot of experience with that,
what you're talking about. When I was
painting billboard signs in Times Square
we had one job called the Regal Booth
Sign. It was green and the men were
asked to mix up this green powder in oil
to put on this regal boots. It was
arsenic, and about eight of them died.
Then I worked with white lead
paint for years. I never ate it, I kept it
off my hands. I didn't rub it on my body
or anything, just plain white lead,
which is poison, you know. It's not good.
I never got affected. I never got
lead poisoning; however, some men did. Why?
Because they mixed the white lead, they mixed
powder, they mix it up in to powder and
they were breathing some of the powder.
The worst thing in art materials is
dust or spray, I think. It's car spray
even water colored spray not good for
you, not at all. That's what's
trouble. There are paints that are still not
good for you like the cadmiums.
There's a lot of laws like the OSHA
laws that want to prohibit anybody
from using any material at all. My point
is that it should be not given to children.
It should be given to professionals. They
should know what they're doing.
That's really the dilemma, because
some of the federal laws want to
prohibit people from using anything.
There was a varnish called rynes
varnish Don knows about. It had,
what did it have? It had ether in it and
some other material. People claimed it
was very carcinogenic. It was made in
England and it was stopped. It was very
good stuff, I mean it was stuff we used all
the time but we were very careful not to
eat it, breathe it, or anything. Low and
behold an Englishman started bootlegging
it up in his attic. So you could
still sneak it out of England. The
two things
are that I think people should
be told what's bad and what's dangerous
and avoid it. I've seen young ladies,
pretty girls, in boat factories in
Florida merely wearing a t-shirt, bare
arms, and a paper mask spraying
fiberglass resin, which is terrible.
That can kill you, I think that I've seen
cases. I saw a wealthy woman who was
totally crippled up because she
couldn't help herself, she was making
sculpture with bare hands and acrylic
fiberglass resin. That certainly
should be explained to students. I've
been painting now for about 40-50 years.
I don't have any poisons yet because
I don't, I use a low volatile mineral
spirit that doesn't evaporate quick and
I stay away from getting paint on my
hands. That's it. Any other? Did I answer
your question?
Yes, dear.
I liked your anecdote about Edwin
Dickinson. I'm wondering what Robert
Beverly Hale was like as a teacher? Okay
here's one. When I studied with him, he was
pretty old. He married, the gal had a
baby. He was in his 80's or something like that.
So anyway, once he said, "if
you want to draw the equestrian, asked a
friend who owns a horse. You tell him
that you won't hurt the horse by drawing him."
- laughter -
He was funny, a funny guy.
Morris Kanter, he had a limp
and he just walked in and go, "what, what are
you doing putting the yellow in there for?"
What? I don't know.
George Grosz, he was a very
delicate draftsman. He'd say "now here,
here I need," you'd give him
your crayons or whatever and he had a
really delicate touch. He was an
incredibly soft teacher. Anybody else?
Yes.
I just love the fact that you know
the titles and the sizes of all of your
paintings and when you painted them,
rather than going to a gallery and
seeing 'Untitled 450.' Well, I'll tell ya. I've
hired a, he's not here, he was supposed to be
here, but he's got sick. Michael Harrigan
has been my curator I don't know how many years now.
It's got to be over 10
years and without him I wouldn't have a
career, because I wouldn't know where my
paintings are, or what they were, or
anything. He's like a detective and he finds
things. I've traded pictures, paintings of
Dennis Hopper in the 60s and he gave his
painting away in the divorced to his
wife. Then Michael found it on a
Austrian catalog somewhere.
He tracks things down.
We like to know where they go, where they
went, and it's curious.
I think Marcel Duchamp said "I do the best
I can and either an artwork has a life
of its own or doesn't."
Karlheinz Stockhausen, the composer, said "I want
my music to be played mathematically
after I'm dead so it's always the same.
Then you have somebody
coming in and reinterpreting it.
Anyway, there's a lot of different ideas.
Anybody else? Yes, dear. I was wondering if
you had any advice to people who want to
do fine arts, as a career. Well, fine art, I
mean, there's a lot of
hoopla in the art world now of people doing
things and asking 20 million dollars for
them and this and that.
As you grow older if you have money or
don't have money you'll find out, I think
you'll find out that arts is really a
passion, it's not a money-making goal.
Which seems to be in the eyes of a lot
of young people. I don't blame them,
because they probably don't have any
money. I never did, I started out with zero,
nothing. I think if you can find a
situation where you can dream up
something that no one else has ever ever
seen as Roy Lichtenstein said "invent
your own game and be the star of it,
because no one else knows how to play it."
If you could do that and you have
time to gather steam and then when you
have an exhibition or show of your work
you'll knock them dead. Here's what,
there's the dilemma. Now it's so expensive in
New York for a young artist that they
scramble to have a show of their fine
art as fast as they can. They try to put
something together to pay the rent and
then the critics say they stink. They
say, "really? Am I really that bad?" Then they
have to work twice as hard to show that
they're now pretty good. Now that
situation has stopped the few people.
Tought ones, tough people it doesn't stop them.
They keep on going.
It's really, it really is a passion for doing
something or doing something that you
want to prove to yourself that you
actually had the idea. That's what I do.
I mean I make paintings because I have
these strange dreams or ideas and
so I make them something
physically so I can relate to them later.
It's also an idea about conceptual art,
too. Where in conceptual art, your
feelings rise according to how you feel.
You can't be high all the time like
in Satori, like in the eastern idea of Satori.
There's a, you have to try to work at it
and maintain your awareness to do
something that's purely
conceptual; however, if you do something
physical - it's a thing, or a painting, or
anything - you can come back and relate to
it. Also that thing that you did
might be a stepping stone to a better
idea, but if you didn't do the thing you
might just forget it.
It's hard, it's always been
difficult for young artists, but I think
it's really the passion that drives them along
to do it. Money, now in the art world,
it seems to be, the art world is
very liquid right now, I think. I don't know why.
I have some ideas, but there's a lot of
money being spent. I'm lucky it's being
spent on me. That's not
always been the case, but my advice
is to get to be really good and then
show your work, then surprised everybody.
No, I have had two protégées now. The story
there, I have a Korean nephew. He was adopted as
a little boy, little baby, and then his
mother and father threw him out of the
house. Who came into place, but
his grandmother, my aunt Ruth. She
said "James would you take care of Jinho,
because he's out on his own?"
I said "well bring him down to Florida."
He came down to Florida, a nervous wreck.
He goes, "I got to leave, I got to see my girlfriend."
I said "well go, I don't care, go."
"No, no, no, I better stay I better
stay, no, no, no." He stayed we stretched up seven
big canvases for him. He started doing really
corny corny paintings, I said "don't do
that corney stuff, show me what you feel." Then up
came the blood and the guts and
everything else. Then it all came.
We sent seven pictures back to his school. He won
a year's free scholarship. Right now he's
a success story. He has a French gallery.
He's had shows recently in Berlin I said "Jen,
what's the most you ever sold a painting
for?" He says "ninety-five thousand dollars."
He's now married. His wife is a few
months pregnant. He's got nothing to do
but work, work, work. He's living in Paris and he's doing
very well. He's financially cool. The
other guy I am trying to help, is Star
Wallowing Bull, an American Indian kid in
Fargo, North Dakota. They gave me an
honorary Doctor degree out there.
They introduced me to his kid. I said, "how you doing?"
He says "how you doing? He says, "I'm an artist." I said, "oh, really?"
He said, "did you have a studio?" I said, "yeah across the
street." I go over there, that kid was like
a baby Picasso. He's brilliant. He was
doing, they looked like psychedelic war
dances with strange figures and things
and I bought a little painting from him.
Immediately I said "look you make ten
paintings. Don't show them to anybody but
me, I'll make a selection. I'll get you a
show in New York." He's been slow
about that. Why? Because
he sells his preliminary drawings for
a couple hundred bucks to some local
people. I said "you could have stayed like
that the rest of your life if you don't
make a decision." I haven't, he's having
some troubles, I think. Jinho is fantastic,
he's fantastic and his paintings are
fantastic, too. He has nowhere to
go but up. I just wanted to ask if you
find yourself critiquing signs and
billboards? I didn't get that dear, what?
I wanted to ask if you find yourself
critiquing signs and billboards? No, no
because it's all photography.
Everything's all photography. See when I
was doing that it was all
hand-painted, which was a great
experience. That doesn't exist
for any youngster today. That's a lost
school of something.
Anybody else? Yeah. Some of your paintings might look like they have some airbrush. No airbrush. Why?
It's too fragile. The only airbrush I ever used was
dots for stars a couple of times but I
tried doing a portrait with an
airbrushing you could just wipe it off
with your hand. See, I want to do
paintings, I've done paintings where the
New York City fire hose has hit them and
did knock the paint off them. Seriously it was
the fire down below and the fire department
stuck a hose through the floor and hit
one of my paintings and ppssshh, the paint's still
stayed there. Anybody else? I just have a
follow up? One more and then that's it. Somebody
in the back there? I was wondering how
long it takes you to finish one of those
big 17 x 40 something foot paintings?
Oh, about 72 years and two months.
- laughter -
Thank you very much.
- applause -
Please join us upstairs in the Kogod
courtyard. We have a little refreshment
and you'll have a chance to talk with Jim a little more.
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