Page 32 - Studio International - February 1968

Social realism in blue : an interview

with James Rosenquist

Gene Swenson

A James Rosenquist Gene Swenson How did you first become interested in art? and made woodcarvings. It seemed to me some kind of
retrospective is at the
James Rosenquist My grandfather in North Dakota used freedom. I wondered why at his age he'd be doing that.
National Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa, until February 25. to do wood carvings in the wintertime. He had a lathe He should either be in high school or out working. That
Rosenquist's Fill, 1965, made out of an old sewing machine. He did jokes. He gave me a question of why. Why should you be out
'the largest Pop work' — it would secretly make nice eggs out of wood, and paint working? And values. Why shouldn't you be doing what
measures 10 ft x 84 ft is them white. He'd put them under the chickens, and my you want to do?
on exhibition at the grandmother would go out and collect the eggs and come What came easiest for me, easier—that was another idea.
Metropolitan Museum, to this one. It would be hard like a rock; she'd look at it
New York, from February My parents never had any money. My father was a
to April. It has been lent by and try to break it. victim of the depression. My mother even said to me,
Mr and Mrs Robert C. Scull. `Why don't you get some work where you can use what
From my own midwestern experiences, I'd say it was you do, so you can do it pretty easy? Get a job where you
hard for anyone in that part of the country to be in- can do some drawing, you ought to be able to make some
terested in art. money at that'. So I took some drawings to a guy who
True. My junior high-school art teacher committed advertised in a newspaper, in Minnesota, an ad for a sign
Growth plan
suicide. In this art class in the seventh grade, one time, a painter.
oil on canvas
great big kid about 19 years old came in, sent by some
70 x 140 in.
Coll: The National Museum reform school. He never talked to anybody much, and You studied with Cameron Booth at the University of
of Modern Art, Tokyo wore a red lumber jacket shirt and levis; he just sat there Minnesota ?