James Rosenquist Quotes

I used to know Madison Avenue advertisers. I didn't like 'em. Bunch of jerks.

- James Rosenquist

I painted billboards above every candy store in Brooklyn.

- James Rosenquist

I decided to make pictures of fragments, images that would spill off the canvas instead of recede into it like a medicine cabinet. I wanted to find images that were in a 'nether-nether-land': things that were a little out of style but hadn't reached the point of nostalgia.

- James Rosenquist

Popular culture isn't a freeze-frame; it is images zapping by in rapid-fire succession, which is why collage is such an effective way of representing contemporary life. The blur between images creates a kind of motion in the mind.

- James Rosenquist

It's amazing how you meet people through other people. I knew a racecar driver, Stefan Johansson, who was very hot. He introduced me to Jean Todt. He introduced me to a French doctor. He introduced me to a French architect who redid the Louvre with I.M. Pei. He introduced me to Daniel Boulud.

- James Rosenquist

I started billboard painting in Minneapolis, and I went to General Outdoor Advertising, and I said, 'I could do that.' They said, 'Oh yeah... we can always use a good man around here.'

- James Rosenquist

I hitchhiked to Miami in 1953, and there were oranges laying on the road, black shantytowns, and marinas with nice boats. The museums were virtually empty.

- James Rosenquist

I am getting old, so I really don't like clocks.

- James Rosenquist

The only thing the Pop Artists had in common is that we all had been commercial artists in some manner. Lichtenstein was a draftsman; I was a billboard painter, but we didn't work together. I didn't meet Andy Warhol until 1964.

- James Rosenquist

I can handle ups and downs.

- James Rosenquist

When I got my first loft, I still didn't know what I was going to paint... There were long stretches when I just sat there and thought without interruption.

- James Rosenquist

When things become peculiar, frustrating and strange, I think it's a good time to start painting.

- James Rosenquist

I'm interested in contemporary vision - the flicker of chrome, reflections, rapid associations, quick flashes of light. Bing! Bang!

- James Rosenquist

There was one reviewer from the 'New York Times,' I forget his name, who said I was 'death warmed over.' I wrote him back that I knew more about death than he did. The 'Times' fired him, put him in the cooking department!

- James Rosenquist

I'm the one who gave steroids to Pop art.

- James Rosenquist

I painted the Astor-Victoria sign seven times, and it's 395 feet wide and 58 feet high. I dropped a gallon of purple paint on Seventh Avenue and 47th Street from 15 stories up and didn't kill anybody. I dropped a brush at Columbus Circle. It fell on a guy's camel-hair coat.

- James Rosenquist

Certainly I have made comments on American society with the various pictures and have done about nine antiwar paintings. But I did them because I was incorporating my feelings into my work.

- James Rosenquist

Many of my old friends are gone now. I have a hard time dealing with the fact that they're just not there to talk to. I can't call them up for a rabbit-skin glue recipe anymore.

- James Rosenquist

Scientists say, 'There is no such thing as time; gravity is a dust from another universe, and outside our own universe are many, many universes in all directions.' They speculate that attached to these universes are probably 6,000 planets identical to Earth. So are there things living out there? Animals, people, anything?

- James Rosenquist

The best thing about being an artist is the free clothing and getting to kiss pretty girls.

- James Rosenquist

I learned a lot of painting tricks painting outside.

- James Rosenquist

I hate getting old, but I'm sticking with it!

- James Rosenquist

I went to the University of Minnesota, and I met this amazing artist named Cameron Boothe there who was in World War I, who studied with Hans Hoffman in Munich.

- James Rosenquist

The automobile crash was... devastating in ways that I still cannot really bear to think about... It took me many years to recover. In some ways, I never have.

- James Rosenquist

People can remember their childhood, but events from four or five years ago are in a never-never land.

- James Rosenquist

I don't do anecdotes. I accumulate experiences.

- James Rosenquist

If a person is insane or troubled, you first have to get the person to admit that they have a problem before you can solve anything.

- James Rosenquist

Many young artists, they look at the art world and think they can make a lot of money.

- James Rosenquist

When I started out, I wanted to paint the Sistine Chapel. But I didn't have the content.

- James Rosenquist

Believe it or not, there were very few books on art, years ago.

- James Rosenquist

I stick the collages on the wall and, if I still like them after a month or two, I make a painting.

- James Rosenquist

Warhol was questioning the capitalist society.

- James Rosenquist

Nothing weighs on me. I don't feel any weight.

- James Rosenquist

I was on a panel with Marshall McLuhan in Canada. Someone says, 'Mr. McLuhan, I read your book, and I disagree with you.' And he says, 'Oh, you read my book? Then you only know half the story.'

- James Rosenquist

You live till you die, and that's the end of it. What good is your legacy when you are dead? I worry about being alive, selling work, having fun, moving and doing things when I am alive.

- James Rosenquist

I think of my actions every day: what seems to be important and what isn't.

- James Rosenquist

I feel lucky that I've been able to make a living from painting any idea that comes into my head.

- James Rosenquist

We may seem insignificantly small, but we exist. So I remain optimistic.

- James Rosenquist

I am not in yesterday; I am not in tomorrow. I am right now.

- James Rosenquist

The very, very beginning is that my mother and father were aviators.

- James Rosenquist

As a person gets older, time gets more interesting. As a kid, you waste so much of it.

- James Rosenquist