James Rosenquist | Academy of Achievement

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Rosenquist emerged as a leader of the Pop Art movement, employing the techniques of advertising illustration and the imagery of popular culture to provoke sharp questions about the nature of a society steeped in consumerism and mass-produced images. Through solid academic training and a long apprenticeship painting giant advertising billboards, Rosenquist mastered powerful techniques for rendering the bright, reflective surfaces of industrial products, and learned to work on a massive scale. Breaking with the dominant school of purely abstract painting, he deployed his formidable technical skills to render familiar objects and images in startling combinations. He gained international renown with monumental works, such as the painting F-111. Ten feet high and 86 feet wide, it interspersed images of a jet fighter plane and a mushroom cloud with those of a tire tread, light bulbs, an umbrella, a child's head in a gleaming domed hair dryer, and a tangled mass of spaghetti in red sauce. In enormously productive career spanning nearly six decades, James Rosenquist's work astonished with its brilliance, playful humor and unflagging invention. His unique, original vision transformed our perception of the world around us."/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="James Rosenquist | Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">In the early 1960s, James Rosenquist emerged as a leader of the Pop Art movement, employing the techniques of advertising illustration and the imagery of popular culture to provoke sharp questions about the nature of a society steeped in consumerism and mass-produced images.</p> <p class="inputText">Through solid academic training and a long apprenticeship painting giant advertising billboards, Rosenquist mastered powerful techniques for rendering the bright, reflective surfaces of industrial products, and learned to work on a massive scale. Breaking with the dominant school of purely abstract painting, he deployed his formidable technical skills to render familiar objects and images in startling combinations. He gained international renown with monumental works, such as the painting <i>F-111</i>. Ten feet high and 86 feet wide, it interspersed images of a jet fighter plane and a mushroom cloud with those of a tire tread, light bulbs, an umbrella, a child's head in a gleaming domed hair dryer, and a tangled mass of spaghetti in red sauce.</p> <p class="inputText">In enormously productive career spanning nearly six decades, James Rosenquist's work astonished with its brilliance, playful humor and unflagging invention. His unique, original vision transformed our perception of the world around us.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="article:modified_time" content="2018-06-25T18:59:41+00:00"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-b-Feature-Image-2800x1120-760x304.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="760"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="304"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@achievers1961"/> <script type="application/ld+json" class="yoast-schema-graph">{"@context":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/#organization","name":"Academy of Achievement","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/","sameAs":["https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-academy-of-achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChe_87uh1H-NIMf3ndTjPFw","https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://twitter.com/achievers1961"],"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/#logo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/12.png","contentUrl":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/12.png","width":1200,"height":630,"caption":"Academy of Achievement"},"image":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/#logo"}},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/#website","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/","name":"Academy of Achievement","description":"A museum of living history","publisher":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/search/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-b-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg","contentUrl":"/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-b-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg","width":2800,"height":1120},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/#webpage","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/","name":"James Rosenquist | Academy of Achievement","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2016-11-16T03:00:37+00:00","dateModified":"2018-06-25T18:59:41+00:00","description":"In the early 1960s, James Rosenquist emerged as a leader of the Pop Art movement, employing the techniques of advertising illustration and the imagery of popular culture to provoke sharp questions about the nature of a society steeped in consumerism and mass-produced images. 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[(max-width:992px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-b-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">James Rosenquist</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Pop Art Pioneer</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-3057 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-artist"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">I think being an artist is having the courage to be original. Many great artists, including Picasso, have all been influenced by the great master paintings...And then finally, they leap, they take off...they become themselves. Then it looks like they just came out of nowhere. Just like 'Pow!'</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Pictorial Narratives of Contemporary America</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> November 29, 1933 </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Death</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> March 31, 2017 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_31682" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31682" style="width: 695px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31682 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James1938-1.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31682 size-full lazyload" alt="1938: A son of the Great Plains, five-year-old James Rosenquist in North Dakota. "When I was little, they always let me make as big a mess as I wanted to."" width="695" height="1223" data-sizes="(max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James1938-1.jpg 695w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James1938-1-216x380.jpg 216w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James1938-1-432x760.jpg 432w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James1938-1.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31682" class="wp-caption-text">1938: A son of the Great Plains, five-year-old James Rosenquist in North Dakota. “When I was little, they always let me make as big a mess as I wanted to.”</figcaption></figure> <p>James Albert Rosenquist was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in the heart of the Great Plains. The vast distances, with their deep perspectives and the long, unbroken horizon made a powerful impression on his visual imagination, and from an early age he drew easily. His parents moved to Minneapolis when he was nine, and he continued to draw, although he had little formal exposure to fine art in his early years. While still in junior high school, he won a scholarship to the Minneapolis School of Art, and began to consider a career as an artist, but he still had little idea what form that would take. After high school, he enrolled in the University of Minnesota, and began to seriously study the history of Western painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. He found work in the summers, painting commercial signs on water tanks and grain elevators throughout the Upper Midwest, often traveling alone, and taking in the odd juxtaposition of advertising images and logos and the changing landscape of rural America in the early 1950s. He continued to work as a billboard painter in Minneapolis throughout the year.</p> <figure id="attachment_31690" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31690" style="width: 1063px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31690 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-billboard.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31690 size-full lazyload" alt="1958: James Rosenquist painting a billboard on 47th Street and Broadway in New York." width="1063" height="1600" data-sizes="(max-width: 1063px) 100vw, 1063px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-billboard.jpg 1063w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-billboard-252x380.jpg 252w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-billboard-505x760.jpg 505w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-billboard.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31690" class="wp-caption-text">1958: James Rosenquist painting a billboard on 47th Street and Broadway in New York City. From 1957-1960, he earned his living as a billboard painter. “This was perfect training, as it turned out, for an artist about to explode onto the pop art scene. He applied sign painting techniques to the large-scale pieces he began painting in 1960.”</figcaption></figure> <p>In 1955, he won a scholarship to study at the Art Students League in New York City, and made his way to Manhattan, the center of an international art scene dominated by the school of abstract impressionism, led by a heroic generation of insurgent creators such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Rosenquist studied with a number of modern masters, including the German exile George Grosz, whose mordant satires of German society between the wars stood at a distant remove from the non-representational abstraction of the New York school.</p> <figure id="attachment_31674" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31674" style="width: 822px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31674 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f6fcc3ba2149786579619693fb39afb4.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31674 size-full lazyload" alt=""Marilyn Monroe, I" (1962): James Rosenquist painted this inverted and fragmented portrait of Marilyn Monroe just following her unexpected death in 1962. Like fellow Pop artist Andy Warhol, Rosenquist transformed Marilyn's iconic image. But whereas Warhol used well-known photographs of the celebrity sex symbol repetitiously, Rosenquist chose to present her in a manner that denied immediate recognition, while preserving her coquettishness. He achieved this by breaking apart her eyes, lips, and hand, reassembling the pieces into a seemingly random configuration, and boldly overlaying letters that are themselves fragments of her name. Below the lettering appears a fragment of the word "Coca-Cola" in the soda's trademark script. Through this association with branding, mass-production, and popular culture, the artist draws attention not so much to Monroe as a person, but as to how she was packaged in the mass media and marketed based on her sex appeal, here synecdochically referred to through images of her smiling mouth and attractive blue eyes artistically repackaged. Rosenquist's painting of Marilyn Monroe is one of countless others painted by his contemporaries, including Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning, that attest to the increasing power of mass media and its impact on art production during the 1960s. (Oil and spray enamel on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, New York)" width="822" height="1158" data-sizes="(max-width: 822px) 100vw, 822px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f6fcc3ba2149786579619693fb39afb4.jpg 822w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f6fcc3ba2149786579619693fb39afb4-270x380.jpg 270w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f6fcc3ba2149786579619693fb39afb4-539x760.jpg 539w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f6fcc3ba2149786579619693fb39afb4.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31674" class="wp-caption-text"><em>Marilyn Monroe, I</em> (1962): James Rosenquist painted this inverted and fragmented portrait of Marilyn Monroe just following her unexpected death in 1962. Like fellow Pop artist Andy Warhol, Rosenquist transformed Marilyn’s iconic image. But whereas Andy Warhol used well-known photographs of the celebrity sex symbol repetitiously, James Rosenquist chose to present her in a manner that denied immediate recognition, while preserving her coquettishness. He achieved this by breaking apart her eyes, lips, and hand, reassembling the pieces into a seemingly random configuration, and boldly overlaying letters that are themselves fragments of her name. Below the lettering appears a fragment of the word “Coca-Cola” in the soda’s trademark script. Through this association with branding, mass-production, and popular culture, the artist draws attention not so much to Marilyn Monroe as a person, but as to how she was packaged in the mass media and marketed based on her sex appeal, here synecdochically referred to through images of her smiling mouth and attractive blue eyes artistically repackaged. James Rosenquist’s painting of Marilyn Monroe is one of countless others painted by his famed contemporaries, including Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning, that attest to the increasing power of mass media and its impact on art production during the 1960s. (Oil and spray enamel on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, New York City)</figcaption></figure> <p>From all of these influences, Rosenquist had formed the ambition to make a unique and personal statement in art, but first he had to find a way to make a living, and once again went to work painting billboards, high above Times Square. He absorbed the industrial techniques employed by the old hands to work on this giant scale, and carried large quantities of unused paint back to his own small studio. When he took the colors he had used to render beer, spaghetti and movie stars in the giant billboards and tried to apply them to his own canvases, he found himself returning to the techniques and imagery of advertising, but applying them to very different purposes. After surviving a terrifying fall from a scaffold high above the streets of New York, Rosenquist gave up his billboard job to devote himself to his own art full-time. In 1960, he produced the first of a series of major works employing the imagery of advertising art in a fragmented, provocative way that inevitably raised questions about America’s consumer culture.</p> <figure id="attachment_31667" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31667" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31667 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/546b58be944fa.image_.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31667 size-full lazyload" alt="1963: James Rosenquist, shirtless, works on a lithography stone in his New York studio." width="1200" height="1546" data-sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/546b58be944fa.image_.jpg 1200w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/546b58be944fa.image_-295x380.jpg 295w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/546b58be944fa.image_-590x760.jpg 590w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/546b58be944fa.image_.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31667" class="wp-caption-text">1963: James Rosenquist, shirtless, works on a lithography stone in his New York studio. Like other pop artists, Rosenquist “adapted the visual language of advertising and pop culture — often funny, vulgar and outrageous — to the context of fine art.” He has said “the art critics called me a Pop artist because I used recognizable imagery.”</figcaption></figure> <p>From his loft studio on a narrow old street called Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan, Rosenquist mingled with the painters who were his neighbors: Barnett Newman, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Like Rosenquist, Johns had moved away from the pure abstraction and improvisational freedom of abstract expressionism into a more rigorous style, incorporating recognizable motifs from American culture. In the early ’60s, Rosenquist’s work was featured in influential group shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. Along with Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, he was identified in the press as a leading light in a new movement known as Pop Art.</p> <figure id="attachment_31810" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31810" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-31810 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-83777206_master.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-31810 lazyload" alt="Portrait of five American pop artists, from left, Tom Wesselman (1931-2004), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol (1928-1987), and Swedish-born Claes Oldenburg, as they pose together in Warhol's loft, New York City, 1964. (Photo by Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1553" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-83777206_master.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-83777206_master-380x259.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-83777206_master-760x518.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-83777206_master.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31810" class="wp-caption-text">1964: Five American pop artists, Tom Wesselman (1931-2004), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol (1928-1987), and Claes Oldenburg, as they pose together in Warhol’s loft in New York City. (Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>Rosenquist’s work drew the interest of a number of notable collectors, and he soon moved to a larger studio on Broome Street, in the neighborhood now known as SoHo. He began to incorporate found materials such as barbed wire, plastic and even an automated conveyor belt into his increasingly elaborate constructions. The architect Philip Johnson commissioned Rosenquist to create a 20-by-20-foot mural for the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair, and Rosenquist’s work began to draw national attention.</p> <figure id="attachment_31681" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31681" style="width: 1600px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31681 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James_Rosenquist_f-111_MoMA.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31681 size-full lazyload" alt=""F-111," exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. James Rosenquist began to paint the 86-foot-long "F-111" in 1964, in the middle of one of this country’s most turbulent decades. Inspired by advertising billboards and by earlier mural-scaled paintings, such as Claude Monet’s "Water Lilies," he designed its 23 panels to wrap around the four walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery at 4 East 77th Street in Manhattan, where it would be displayed the following year. Rosenquist took as his subject the F-111 fighter bomber plane, the newest, most technologically advanced weapon in development at the time, and positioned it, as he later explained, “flying through the flak of consumer society to question the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising.” Its jumps of scale, collage-like juxtaposition of fragments of imagery, and gloriously vivid palette exemplify the style that defines Rosenquist’s singular contribution to Pop art in the United States. For this special installation, located outside the entrance to the fourth-floor Painting and Sculpture galleries, "F-111" is presented as it was first exhibited at the Castelli Gallery in 1965." width="1600" height="1061" data-sizes="(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James_Rosenquist_f-111_MoMA.jpg 1600w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James_Rosenquist_f-111_MoMA-380x252.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James_Rosenquist_f-111_MoMA-760x504.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James_Rosenquist_f-111_MoMA.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31681" class="wp-caption-text"><em>F-111</em>, exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. James Rosenquist began to paint the 86-foot-long <em>F-111</em> in 1964, in the middle of one of this country’s most turbulent decades. Inspired by advertising billboards and by earlier mural-scaled paintings, such as Claude Monet’s <em>Water Lilies</em>, he designed its 23 panels to wrap around the four walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery at 4 East 77th Street in Manhattan, where it would be displayed the following year. Rosenquist took as his subject the F-111 fighter bomber plane, the newest, most technologically advanced weapon in development at the time, and positioned it, as he later explained, “flying through the flak of consumer society to question the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising.” Its jumps of scale, collage-like juxtaposition of fragments of imagery, and gloriously vivid palette exemplify the unique style that defines James Rosenquist’s singular contribution to Pop art in the United States.</figcaption></figure> <p>In his new workspace, Rosenquist undertook his most ambitious project to date. <em>F-111</em> is ten feet high and 86 feet wide; it was first exhibited wrapped around three walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery on the Upper East Side in Rosenquist’s first solo exhibition. It depicts an F-111 fighter plane, a controversial new aircraft already regarded as a costly boondoggle by critics of Pentagon spending, deftly interwoven with images of assorted consumer products. “My plan,” he says, “was to sell the picture in fragments, so that collectors who bought pieces of the picture would be acquiring a souvenir of an object that they had already paid for with their taxes.” As it happened, a single collector bought the entire set of panels and launched it on a tour of the world’s art museums. Rosenquist’s fame spread across Europe, and he became of one the best-known ambassadors of American art. Many read political meaning into Rosenquist’s work, but for the most part, he distanced himself from overt political involvement, although he was briefly arrested while participating in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in New York City in 1972.</p> <figure id="attachment_31691" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31691" style="width: 2059px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31691 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist_91880_1.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31691 size-full lazyload" alt="1975: "Violet Turn" by James Rosenquist" width="2059" height="1001" data-sizes="(max-width: 2059px) 100vw, 2059px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist_91880_1.jpg 2059w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist_91880_1-380x185.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist_91880_1-760x369.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist_91880_1.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31691" class="wp-caption-text">1975: <em>Violet Turn</em> by James Rosenquist. <em>Violet Turn</em> is a vibrant color lithograph on paper. The nails are a motif that Rosenquist often used in the 1970s, a period of immense personal difficulty for the artist. The nails are said to make reference to both the traumas Rosenquist experienced and also as a symbol of rebuilding and renewal.</figcaption></figure> <p>During the 1970s, Rosenquist continued to pursue his interest in unconventional materials and site-specific installations, with more wraparound canvases, with paintings on polyester film, and on reflective panels in an installation wreathed in dry ice fog. With his reputation no longer limited to the New York art world, Rosenquist began dividing his time between studio spaces in New York and Florida. In 1973, he began construction of vast studio spaces in Aripeka, Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico, to accommodate his ever-growing work, including murals for Florida’s state capitol building in Tallahassee. Rosenquist’s reputation made him a prominent advocate for the arts in American life. After lobbying persuasively for federal protection of artists’ rights, he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to serve on the National Council on the Arts.</p> <figure id="attachment_31666" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31666" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31666 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21668042.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31666 size-full lazyload" alt="1981, New York: James Rosenquist in his studio in front of his painting entitled "Star Thief." (Bob Adelman/Corbis)" width="2280" height="1204" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21668042.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21668042-380x201.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21668042-760x401.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21668042.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31666" class="wp-caption-text">1981, New York: James Rosenquist in his studio in front of his painting entitled <em>Star Thief</em>. Unlike Rosenquist’s famed advertising paintings, <em>Star Thief</em> is not Pop, and is not instantly interpretable. Rather, the night sky here is something cryptic and poetic; it could even be a metaphor for his artistic process and explorations. “The star in the ‘Thief’ that brings you to all the places you didn’t originally plan to go,” Rosenquist has said. “It is like thinking: The more thinking you do, the deeper you go, and the more mysteries you see and want to discover.” (Corbis Photo)</figcaption></figure> <p>Rosenquist’s creation of the massive (17- by 46-foot) painting <em>Star Thief</em> was documented for a 1981 <em>LIFE </em>magazine story, “Evolution of a Painting.” The finished work was selected for the concourse of Miami International Airport but was rejected by one of the participating airlines, amid a storm of controversy. The work would later be acquired by the Museum Ludwig, in Cologne, Germany. Throughout the ’80s, Rosenquist continued to paint and exhibit large-scale works with imaginative, provocative titles, including: <em>Four New Clear Women; The Persistence of Electrical Nymphs in Space; and Flowers, Fish and Females for the Four Seasons</em> (originally created for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, it would later be acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art). In 1986, his historic painting, <em>F-111</em>, was sold by the estate of its original owner for $2.09 million, the highest price paid to that time for one of Rosenquist’s works.</p> <figure id="attachment_31677" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31677" style="width: 1451px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31677 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/header_James-Rosenquist-115.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31677 size-full lazyload" alt="James Rosenquist in his Aripeka, Florida studio, 1988. (Photo by Russ Blaise)" width="1451" height="2003" data-sizes="(max-width: 1451px) 100vw, 1451px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/header_James-Rosenquist-115.jpg 1451w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/header_James-Rosenquist-115-275x380.jpg 275w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/header_James-Rosenquist-115-551x760.jpg 551w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/header_James-Rosenquist-115.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31677" class="wp-caption-text">1988: James Rosenquist in his Aripeka, Florida studio. In 2009, a fire swept through his property where Rosenquist has lived for more than three decades, burning the artist’s house, studios, and warehouse. All of Rosenquist’s paintings, stored on his property, were destroyed, including art for his upcoming shows. (Photo by Russ Blaise)</figcaption></figure> <p>In the early 1990s, Rosenquist was the subject of major retrospective exhibitions in newly post-Soviet Russia and in Spain, where he was later decorated for his services to universal culture. He was later decorated by the governments of France, Italy and Japan. The end of the decade saw him initiating two major series of paintings, <em>The Swimmer in the Econo-mist</em> and <em>Speed of Light</em>. While continuing to produce his signature large works and murals, he maintained side practices in lithography, printmaking, sculpture and collage. In the first decade of the 21st century, many of these were collected in book form. Rosenquist himself was the subject of a number of documentary films, and was featured in two public television series, <em>The Shock of the New</em> and <em>The Empire of the Signs: American Visions</em>. The year 2006 saw the exhibition in Basel, Switzerland of Rosenquist’s monumental work, <em>Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Eleanor Roosevelt</em>.</p> <figure id="attachment_48733" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-48733" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-48733 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp2-RosenquistGoldenPlate.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-48733 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1629" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp2-RosenquistGoldenPlate.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp2-RosenquistGoldenPlate-380x272.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp2-RosenquistGoldenPlate-760x543.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp2-RosenquistGoldenPlate.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-48733" class="wp-caption-text">Awards Council member James Rosenquist presents the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award to architect Philip C. Johnson at the 1991 Banquet ceremonies held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.</figcaption></figure> <p>As he entered the sixth decade of a staggeringly productive and influential career, Rosenquist continued to produce at a great pace. His interview with the Academy of Achievement was conducted in 1991, shortly after his return from Russia, as the country was just emerging from Communist rule. To artists around the world, Rosenquist’s creations have exemplified a clear-eyed and exuberant celebration of the free imagination.</p> <figure id="attachment_31673" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31673" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31673 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DWF15-1008294.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31673 size-full lazyload" alt="2004, New York City: Visitors observe James Rosenquist's "F-111" in the newly renovated Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). After a two-year renovation, MOMA celebrated its reopening of the museum with free admission. (Michael Kim/Corbis)" width="2280" height="1168" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DWF15-1008294.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DWF15-1008294-380x195.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DWF15-1008294-760x389.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DWF15-1008294.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31673" class="wp-caption-text">2004, New York City: Visitors observing James Rosenquist’s <em>F-111</em> in the newly renovated Museum of Modern Art.</figcaption></figure> <p>Rosenquist’s home and studios in Aripeka were destroyed by a wildfire in April 2009. Fifteen recently completed canvases, which were about to be shipped to New York, were lost in the fire, along with his extensive archives. He shared his reflections on his long career in an acclaimed autobiography published later that year, <em>Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art</em>.  James Rosenquist died in New York City at the age of 83.</p> </body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 1988 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.artist">Artist</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> November 29, 1933 </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Death</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> March 31, 2017 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">In the early 1960s, James Rosenquist emerged as a leader of the Pop Art movement, employing the techniques of advertising illustration and the imagery of popular culture to provoke sharp questions about the nature of a society steeped in consumerism and mass-produced images.</p> <p class="inputText">Through solid academic training and a long apprenticeship painting giant advertising billboards, Rosenquist mastered powerful techniques for rendering the bright, reflective surfaces of industrial products, and learned to work on a massive scale. Breaking with the dominant school of purely abstract painting, he deployed his formidable technical skills to render familiar objects and images in startling combinations. He gained international renown with monumental works, such as the painting <i>F-111</i>. Ten feet high and 86 feet wide, it interspersed images of a jet fighter plane and a mushroom cloud with those of a tire tread, light bulbs, an umbrella, a child’s head in a gleaming domed hair dryer, and a tangled mass of spaghetti in red sauce.</p> <p class="inputText">In enormously productive career spanning nearly six decades, James Rosenquist’s work astonished with its brilliance, playful humor and unflagging invention. His unique, original vision transformed our perception of the world around us.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/cm9f936lqE0?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0&start=0&end=4314&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_08_31_05.Still002-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_08_31_05.Still002-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Pictorial Narratives of Contemporary America</h2> <div class="sans-2">Aripeka, Florida</div> <div class="sans-2">March 18, 1991</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Let’s talk about <em>F-111</em>. How did that painting come about, and how did you decide to make it so huge?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/-oCFUskwRzQ?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_19_14_12.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_19_14_12.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>James Rosenquist: That was kind of a culmination of a number of ideas, and one was visiting an amusement park in Texas and seeing a B-36 airplane just sitting there rusting. And then going to an amusement park that had a lot of unnatural things about it as a theme park. And then talking to Barnett Newman about “it” and about seeing something which turns out that a person, whatever one looks at, is relegated by peripheral vision — what you see through the side of your eyes makes what you think you see, that color for instance. Or color can change other colors, according to the whole surrounding of senses of color, light, dark, everything. So that I wanted to make a room where wherever you look, that color would be that color, because everything else made it that color. And that was it. I could really set the knobs and really do that. I learned that income taxes were started by the Chinese as a donation to make a humanist donation to a community or a society. And just at that time, I met Paul Berg from the <em>St. Louis Post Dispatch</em>, who had just come back from some combat missions in Vietnam. So the culmination of all these things. I thought of the economy that this war weapon supported in Texas and in Long Island. So that was the beginning idea to get me off the chair to do this painting. And later it was taken as a great anti-war picture, and everything. But it didn’t start out that way. It was really more of how illogical it was to be an artist in this century, and this time. What a joke it was to be an artist. I mean, if one thinks that they have any power — political power — by being an artist or saying something or doing anything, it didn’t seem to be. The artist’s role in society seemed to be silly at that time.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_31811" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31811" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31811 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-144898575_master.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31811 size-full lazyload" alt="May 15, 1965: Artist James Rosenquist at Leo Castelli Gallery, where he is completing painting his landmark 86-foot anti-war painting "F-111," in New York City. (Photo by David Gahr/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1524" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-144898575_master.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-144898575_master-380x254.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-144898575_master-760x508.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-144898575_master.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31811" class="wp-caption-text">May 15, 1965: James Rosenquist at Leo Castelli Gallery, where he is completing painting his landmark 86-foot anti-war painting <em>F-111</em>, in New York City. <em>F-111</em> addresses the connections between the Vietnam War, income taxes, consumerism and advertising. James Rosenquist began the painting in 1964, in the middle of the Vietnam War.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>But at the same time, as an artist you were making a political statement.</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Not self-consciously, I don’t think. Not at that time.</p> <figure id="attachment_31684" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31684" style="width: 1383px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-31684 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JamesRosenquist-F-111.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-31684 lazyload" alt=""F-111" (detail), 1964-65: Oil on canvas and aluminum. 10 ft. x 86 ft. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. James Rosenquist began to paint the 86-foot-long "F-111" in 1964, in the middle of one of this country’s most turbulent decades. Inspired by advertising billboards and by earlier mural-scaled paintings, such as Claude Monet’s "Water Lilies," he designed its 23 panels to wrap around the four walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery at 4 East 77th Street in Manhattan, where it would be displayed the following year. Rosenquist took as his subject the F-111 fighter bomber plane, the newest, most technologically advanced weapon in development at the time, and positioned it, as he later explained, “flying through the flak of consumer society to question the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising.” Its jumps of scale, collage-like juxtaposition of fragments of imagery, and gloriously vivid palette exemplify the style that defines Rosenquist’s singular contribution to Pop art in the United States. For this special installation, located outside the entrance to the fourth-floor Painting and Sculpture galleries, "F-111" will be presented as it was first exhibited at the Castelli Gallery in 1965." width="1383" height="1992" data-sizes="(max-width: 1383px) 100vw, 1383px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JamesRosenquist-F-111.jpg 1383w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JamesRosenquist-F-111-264x380.jpg 264w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JamesRosenquist-F-111-528x760.jpg 528w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JamesRosenquist-F-111.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31684" class="wp-caption-text"><em>F-111</em> (detail), 1964-65: Oil on canvas and aluminum. 10 ft. x 86 ft. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. James Rosenquist began to paint the 86-foot-long <em>F-111</em> in 1964, in the middle of one of this country’s most turbulent decades. Inspired by advertising billboards and by earlier mural-scaled paintings, such as Claude Monet’s <em>Water Lilies</em>, Rosenquist designed its 23 panels to wrap around the four walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery in Manhattan.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>People were shocked when they first saw your art in the early ’60s. It seemed to go against the grain of everything we had been brought up to feel about art. It was very audacious to use commercial, mass production images. Why were you so taken with this revolutionary approach to art?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: I don’t think it’s really revolutionary. It shows occasionally in our history, like in the “High and Low” show, there was a Joan Miró painting, a beautiful Miró painting, and the inspiration from that came from clipping a little picture of a knife, fork and spoon out of a catalogue somewhere. And he used the positive-negative space as a sketch, and then this became a big beautiful painting. It was very atmospheric and very unusual, and the knife, fork and spoons were transformed a little bit into funny shapes, but they were still from that. It showed the daring.</p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/VXJIzjVVIXA?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_27_13_00.Still009-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_27_13_00.Still009-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>People have always been searching for an idea, or a reason to get them off the chair to do something. So during the time of Abstract Expressionism, a lot of students were merely taught to be careless with abandon. Hit the canvas with a rag, with a broom, with a brush. You know, that’s called “tachism.” After you’ve made a mark on the canvas, does that mark suggest an inspiration, you see? Then you have to have the responsibility to finish something and do something about that mark that you made, because you destroyed a beautiful painting surface. So, so many people were being taught like that, that the brushstroke — the viscosity of paint — became a cliché. That’s one thing, that people became tired of that. So also, tired of an abstract painting being misinterpreted into something else. For instance, something that could be very ethereal looking and very unusual looking could have a figure of Popeye sitting there in the middle of it, but the artist didn’t really see it. Now that’s maybe a bad artist for having something in there that they didn’t want. Hans Hofmann would never have done that. He was a sharp old duck. He knew what he was doing. But a lot of people would slip, and flip, and then you could see the strangest artworks coming out. So people, so called Pop artists, a lot of them were commercial artists. Roy Lichtenstein did drafting, I was a billboard painter, Andy Warhol was a commercial artist. And others.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p><strong>Do you think there was a reason why this happened when it did? This sense of making serious art from sources that had not been considered serious art?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: I can’t put my finger on that one. I don’t really know. One could say that abstract painting up until 1945 or 1950 really had its roots in Europe, from French non-objective painting. One could say this looks more American, which has less roots in Europe. But I don’t want to say that, because I don’t see enough reasons for that. It would be a self-conscious attitude, like saying, “Hey, I’m going to do this now because I hate Europeans. I’m not going to be like that. I’m an American.” I don’t see that.</p> <figure id="attachment_31669" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31669" style="width: 928px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-31669 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1341-James-Rosenquist-02.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-31669 lazyload" alt="James Rosenquist in his studio with "Paint Brush," 1964. (Archives of American Art/Ellen Hulda)" width="928" height="636" data-sizes="(max-width: 928px) 100vw, 928px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1341-James-Rosenquist-02.jpg 928w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1341-James-Rosenquist-02-380x260.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1341-James-Rosenquist-02-760x521.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1341-James-Rosenquist-02.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31669" class="wp-caption-text">James Rosenquist in his New York City studio with <em>Paint Brush</em>, 1964. (Photo Archives of American Art/Ellen Hulda)</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>Did you feel that you were part of a movement at the time?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Well, Lawrence Alloway coined that term “Pop Art.” We were also called “New Realists,” and a lot of other things. I think it was a misnomer, Pop Art. Lawrence Alloway seemed to think that everyone was infatuated with popular imagery, which I don’t think was the case. The strange thing is that since 1960, that art has still remained popular. People remain interested in it. Also, the artists involved have been very lucky to have a rather long life, with the exception of Andy Warhol and Öyvind Fahlström. But they’ve been pretty lucky. I’m lucky to have a rather long career.</p> <p><strong>There’s a fascinating collision of seemingly unrelated images in so much of your work, starting in the ’60s. How did you want people to look at these incongruous images? What did you want them to feel?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Well, I would like them to realize how much can come out of a little paint pot! Just open up a little pot of paint, it flies all over the place! That’s a thing that students don’t know.</p> <figure id="attachment_31689" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31689" style="width: 1400px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31689 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/president-elect.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31689 size-full lazyload" alt=""President Elect" (1960-61): Like many Pop artists, Rosenquist was fascinated by the popularization of political and cultural figures in mass media. In his billboard-style painting "President Elect," the artist fuses Madison Avenue caliber advertising with political ambition by depicting John F. Kennedy's smiling face alongside consumer items — namely, a yellow Chevrolet and a slice of cake from an ad. Rosenquist created the collage using images cut from their original context that he adapted to fit a monumental scale in a photo-realistic style. As Rosenquist explains, "The face was from Kennedy's campaign poster. I was very interested at that time in people who advertised themselves. Why did they put up an advertisement of themselves? So that was his face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a piece of stale cake." Considered the artist's breakthrough work, "President Elect" speaks to Rosenquist's fascination with subliminal persuasion through advertising. Rosenquist had a strong interest in the imagery of advertising, and wanted to translate its power into his artwork: "Painting is probably much more exciting than advertising," he said, "so why shouldn't it be done with that power and gusto, with that impact." This large-scale work exemplifies Rosenquist's technique of combining discrete images through techniques of blending, interlocking, and juxtaposition, as well as his skill at including political and social commentary using popular imagery. By placing Kennedy, the first presidential candidate to harness mass media to benefit his campaign, in the same frame as a sleek, powerful 1949 Chevy and dainty fingers caressing cake, the artist suggests the three subjects are similarly neatly packaged, marketed as desirable, and sold to the American people. At the same time, here Kennedy becomes a symbol of post-war American abundance. (Oil on masonite. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.)" width="1400" height="888" data-sizes="(max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/president-elect.jpg 1400w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/president-elect-380x241.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/president-elect-760x482.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/president-elect.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31689" class="wp-caption-text"><em>President Elect</em> (1960-61): Like many Pop artists, Rosenquist was fascinated by the popularization of political and cultural figures in mass media. In his billboard-style painting <em>President Elect</em>, the artist fuses Madison Avenue caliber advertising with political ambition by depicting John F. Kennedy’s smiling face alongside consumer items — namely, a yellow Chevrolet and a slice of cake from an ad. Rosenquist created the collage using images cut from their original context that he adapted to fit a monumental scale in a photo-realistic style. As Rosenquist explains, “The face was from Kennedy’s campaign poster. I was very interested at that time in people who advertised themselves. Why did they put up an advertisement of themselves? So that was his face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a piece of stale cake.” Considered the artist’s breakthrough work, <em>President Elect</em> speaks to Rosenquist’s fascination with subliminal persuasion through advertising. Rosenquist had a strong interest in the imagery of advertising, and wanted to translate its power into his artwork: “Painting is probably much more exciting than advertising,” he said, “so why shouldn’t it be done with that power and gusto, with that impact.”</figcaption></figure> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/aRyT-w2aG3Y?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.01_06_22_08.Still012-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.01_06_22_08.Still012-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/preparation/">Preparation</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I’ve taught very few times, but when I’ve been to a school for boys and girls, they’re trying to make an expression from a little tube of paint, and they don’t know how to mix paint or do any of that, anything practical. So they get very frustrated. And they take a cigarette, they put it out in the mess, and they go home. And everything is dirty and a mess, everything. And so I show them how to take the paint out of the tube, and smear it up, and how much space they could cover with just the little bit of paint in that tube. I show them how to do that, and after a while, they could make these big beautiful abstract paintings, and I said, “Fantastic! Now you have to have an idea, that’s the next part.” But it’s the same with film. To be able to use it, to be able to do it. To be able to light things, to be able to do all that takes someone to show you the knack of how to do that. It’s craft.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p><strong>Speaking of incongruity, let’s talk about <em>I Love You with My Ford</em>. There’s a big mass of spaghetti, a pair of lovers, and a Ford.</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: The front of a car, yeah. That really was just an electronic focal vision. It was like short ends of film or something. It was just another kind of composition where you just see this here, and this there, and this there, and it’s that simple. Just bing, bang, boom, instead of the old Renaissance structure and push-and-pull composition. It’s like the eye just picks out, looks at things. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like a pointless electrical computer. It just picks out whatever it wants to pick out, and it doesn’t push this composition to the left, and move this composition up, and move this around. My mind doesn’t work that way.</p> <figure id="attachment_31680" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31680" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31680 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/iloveyouwithmyford.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31680 size-full lazyload" alt="James Rosenquist's “I Love You with My Ford” (1961)" width="2280" height="2018" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/iloveyouwithmyford.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/iloveyouwithmyford-380x336.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/iloveyouwithmyford-760x673.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/iloveyouwithmyford.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31680" class="wp-caption-text"><em>I Love You with My Ford</em> (1961). Rosenquist states that “when I copied a 1940s spaghetti illustration, I had to ask myself, why am I doing this? I didn’t honestly know. It was just an instinct about images as pure form… in a sense the spaghetti is like an abstract expressionist painting. De Kooning loved it. He said it was sexy.” The grill of a Ford. A woman opening her mouth sensually. A close-up of spaghetti. What do these three disparate images have in common? All used to sell commodities they are ‘zoomed in’ on to remove their contexts, becoming abstract vignettes of consumer culture. Icons, of sorts, of the American Dream, absurdly combined, tinged with sexuality – auto-erotic, carnal, and gastronomic desires, with the spaghetti coming alive as snakes, in close-up vibrant color.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>It’s a startling effect, standing in front of one of your paintings. I gather that you want to jar people with your art. You don’t want them to just stand there and think, “Oh, what a lovely composition.”</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Well, I think they’re lovely! I think they are lovely, quiet compositions. I think it is all in how you see things. I don’t know what’s jarring anymore. I mean, you could say, “Well, there’s a landscape painting from the 19th century, it’s gorgeous.” Whatever. As time goes by, I don’t know what’s jarring. Artists have always looked for brutality aesthetically in their work. For instance, a French Impressionist painter would go out in the field, take Van Gogh, for instance. Go out in the field, and he’d make a painting, and he’d bring it in, and there would be little pieces of grass and straw in it, and he’d bring it inside a house. Now, wrenching something from nature, transforming it by bringing it into a sitting room or a dining room or a house, is a big brutality, a big strange thing right there. That’s strange. From doing something aesthetically, out in a field, next to a straw stack or something, and then transforming that by bringing and taking pieces of grass in it, and putting it in a living room, this powerful piece of nature out there that is done — not nature — from nature, is already terrifying. It seems very, very strong and unusual. It doesn’t go with the furniture. It doesn’t go with the wallpaper. It doesn’t go with anything. So that originally was very shocking and brutal. It seems like every generation of artists has been looking for that kind of transformation.</p> <figure id="attachment_31679" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31679" style="width: 2024px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31679 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/houseoffire.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31679 size-full lazyload" alt=""House of Fire" (1981) by James Rosenquist (oil on canvas). Trained as a billboard painter, Rosenquist began creating large-scale, lavishly composed works as a Pop artist in the 1960s. "House of Fire" exudes the dynamism and sensuous polish that have characterized his work since that period. In this allegorical triptych, prosaic objects become strangely treacherous: a grocery bag is mysteriously suspended in air, a supernaturally radiant bucket of molten steel descends through a window, and fiery lipsticks align like a battery of guns. The allusions to violence, sex, and consumerism recall earlier works such as the artist's monumental "F-111" of 1965, which mixes imagery of a U.S. Air Force fighter-bomber with that of a child and a mass of spaghetti, producing a heightened sense of seduction and danger." width="2024" height="915" data-sizes="(max-width: 2024px) 100vw, 2024px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/houseoffire.jpg 2024w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/houseoffire-380x172.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/houseoffire-760x344.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/houseoffire.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31679" class="wp-caption-text"><em>House of Fire</em> (1981) by James Rosenquist. Trained as a billboard painter, Rosenquist began creating large-scale, lavishly composed works as a Pop artist in the 1960s. <em>House of Fire</em> exudes the dynamism and sensuous polish that have characterized his work since that period. In this allegorical triptych, prosaic objects become strangely treacherous: a grocery bag is mysteriously suspended in air, a supernaturally radiant bucket of molten steel descends through a window, and fiery lipsticks align like a battery of guns. The allusions to violence, sex, and consumerism recall earlier works such as his monumental <em>F-111</em>, which mixes imagery of a U.S. Air Force fighter-bomber with that of a child and a mass of spaghetti, producing a heightened sense of seduction and danger.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>And in your case, a six-foot-tall fingernail painted red is a shocking thing to see in a living room.</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Well, it’s a fingernail cut like a pen point. I don’t think it’s very shocking. In a room? I don’t know.</p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/PhIbi0sRA3Y?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_18_59_01.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_18_59_01.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>When I started painting, I thought my pictures would stand out, because I would be in a group show with other kinds of artwork. And then what really happened was that my work was grouped with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and so forth, and so on. So it didn’t stand out as much, because that was the terrible temper of the times. Now, who knows what is shocking anymore? I really don’t know. How can anyone shock anybody now? I’m sure they can. Or what kind of vision could a youngster put on a two-dimensional canvas or surface now? And I think there is millions of things to do. A lot of people say, well, it’s all been done. Not true. You think of every artist, if they seem to start in a group, if someone calls them a group, their lives send them out in diverging paths, and they get further and further, their whole artwork becomes further and further away from each other. That happens with every group. They seem to start with similar enthusiasm, but then as they grow older, it’s much more divergent. Their paintings start to look quite different, and much, much different. If you look at all the Abstract Expressionists, so-called Abstract Expressionists, like say Mark Rothko and De Kooning and Jackson Pollock, how different they all are. It’s too bad they didn’t get to live longer. Pollock died when he was 45 years old, I guess.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p><figure id="attachment_31697" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31697" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31697 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-stowaway.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31697 size-full lazyload" alt="2000: "Stowaway Peers Out of the Speed of Light." During the late 1990s, Rosenquist began incorporating abstraction into his billboard-size collage paintings. "Stowaway Peers Out of the Speed of Light" features brightly colored, distorted, and compressed forms whirling through space amidst layers of sleek, reflective vortices. The seemingly chaotic composition is part of the "Speed of Light" series, which explores vision in motion. Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and the speed of light, Stowaway addresses how people see and understand the same image differently. Rosenquist explained: "In Einstein's study of the speed of light, apparently the speeding person looks out of the window [sic], and the view is altered because of the tremendous speed. And then the spectator, watching the speeding person — the look of that is also altered. Things are crammed together, and they're foreshortened. It's a pun, really. Like the difference between the artist and the critic, how different people see different things." Although Rosenquist's process of creation remains the same, this painting attests to the artist's rediscovered admiration for the gestural paintings of Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. This transition from focusing exclusively on the mass media and consumer imagery of his earlier career to addressing intersections between science and aesthetics lends Rosenquist's later work new relevance. He continues to hearken back to his career as a billboard painter, but with different results. "Underneath it all is all my experience," the artist says of the series. "The paintings are about my imagination as to a new view, or a new look at the speed of light. And they also have to do with the whole history of my experience put into a painting." (Oil on canvas. Collection of the artist.)" width="2280" height="859" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-stowaway.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-stowaway-380x143.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-stowaway-760x286.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-stowaway.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31697" class="wp-caption-text">2000: <em>Stowaway Peers Out of the Speed of Light</em>. During the late 1990s, Rosenquist began incorporating abstraction into his billboard-size collage paintings. <em>Stowaway Peers Out of the Speed of Light</em> features brightly colored, distorted, and compressed forms whirling through space amidst layers of sleek, reflective vortices. The seemingly chaotic composition is part of the<em> Speed of Light</em> series, which explores vision in motion. Inspired by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and the speed of light, Stowaway addresses how people see and understand the same image differently. Rosenquist explained: “In Einstein’s study of the speed of light, apparently the speeding person looks out of the window [sic], and the view is altered because of the tremendous speed. And then the spectator, watching the speeding person — the look of that is also altered. Things are crammed together, and they’re foreshortened. It’s a pun, really. Like the difference between the artist and the critic, how different people see different things.” Although Rosenquist’s process of creation remains the same, this painting attests to the artist’s rediscovered admiration for the gestural paintings of Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. This transition from focusing exclusively on the mass media and consumer imagery of his earlier career to addressing intersections between science and aesthetics lends Rosenquist’s later work new relevance. He continues to hearken back to his career as a billboard painter, but with different results. “Underneath it all is all my experience,” the artist says of the series. “The paintings are about my imagination as to a new view, or a new look at the speed of light. And they also have to do with the whole history of my experience put into a painting.”</figcaption></figure><strong>Was Pollock an important artist for you, early on?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Yes, of course. Of course. Of course he was. I never met him. I think I saw him once — but I never met him — at the Cedar Bar. Students would go to a Miró show and a Pollock show, which would be simultaneous in Manhattan. And they’d say, “You know, Pollock, he’s terrific, but you know, it’s really Miró. He’s really the genius.” Pollock was influenced by Miró. And you’d see something by Andre Masson, and you’d say, “Pollock, he’s terrific, but really, you know, Andre Masson invented it all. He’s the one.” Then, when Pollock had this big show, after he was dead, at the Museum of Modern Art, his work was showed chronologically, and at the end these big paintings occurred and he sort of went up and out the window! The show was really the spirit of a great person and a great artist. He went out in a blaze of glory, even though the last few years of his life were difficult, unlike the performance curve of a lot of artists who are very expansive at some points and then they go back down again. Up and down and up and down. So sure, he was very, very important.</p> <figure id="attachment_31696" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31696" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-31696 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-Serenade-for-the-Doll-after-Claude-Debussy-Gift-Wrapped-Doll-16-.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-31696 lazyload" alt="" width="1280" height="1290" data-sizes="(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-Serenade-for-the-Doll-after-Claude-Debussy-Gift-Wrapped-Doll-16-.jpg 1280w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-Serenade-for-the-Doll-after-Claude-Debussy-Gift-Wrapped-Doll-16--190x190.jpg 190w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-Serenade-for-the-Doll-after-Claude-Debussy-Gift-Wrapped-Doll-16--377x380.jpg 377w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-Serenade-for-the-Doll-after-Claude-Debussy-Gift-Wrapped-Doll-16--754x760.jpg 754w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-Serenade-for-the-Doll-after-Claude-Debussy-Gift-Wrapped-Doll-16-.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31696" class="wp-caption-text">1992: <em>Gift Wrapped Doll #16</em>. This painting, one of 12 in this series exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1993, presents a partial frontal view of a doll wrapped in cellophane. Painted on a large scale (60 x 60 inches), the doll speaks to the innocence of childhood, while its wide-eyed expression suggests surprise or fright, as if being suffocated by the cellophane that distorts its features. The effect is disconcerting for the viewer and reminiscent of the deep human understanding that dolls can be both comforting and frightening. The work follows in a tradition of art made with dolls, and particularly references the Surrealist fascination with dolls and toys evident in the work of artists such as Hans Bellmer. The title refers to a work by French composer Claude Debussy, whose musical composition “Serenade of the Doll” was written for his daughter. Indeed, Rosenquist’s painting was inspired in large part by his own experience as a father raising his then young daughter Lily. However, James Rosenquist’s work is not so much an examination of childhood as a statement about the world that his daughter will inhabit.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>When you moved to New York to study, were the other New York artists role models or inspirations for you?</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/mmPOvvLi5oA?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_23_39_10.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_23_39_10.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>James Rosenquist: The artists who I respected who were living in New York were really ne’er-do-wells, and they really… Let’s say like Bill de Kooning, the artist, he wore an old pair of bib overalls, he had a cheap loft, he painted seven days a week, 11 months a year, and I think one month out of the year he’d get totally drunk. Then he’d go back, that was his vacation. Then he’d start all over again. And his habit was… he was really an extremely hard worker. Other artists, like Franz Kline, had big underground reputations, but they didn’t seem to… you know, they certainly weren’t living any kind of fancy lifestyle, or any kind of luxury. They looked very poor. That seemed to typify the Abstract Expressionist artists. So it was very difficult to see them and meet them, and wondering if this was any kind of a life to have, because it seemed so bad. But however, it was private. It was totally private. The luxury seemed to be if one could live in a metropolitan city without having to deal with it, and just having enough money, not having to deal with it, you could really walk around and enjoy life. And that was also the time of the “beat generation,” where people hitchhiked around a lot, which I did. I moved around a lot. I mean, at one point, I had an apartment for 30 bucks a month, a studio for 45 dollars a month, breakfast was a quarter at the Students Institute: two eggs, toast and tea. I didn’t have any money, but I was rich! That was the feeling. That’s really impossible now to do that in Manhattan. At the same time, in other cities in the United States, it was more expensive at that point than it was in New York. A person could come back from the Army, could come back from something, could start in New York, very cheaply, and get a footing. Not anymore, I don’t think. It’s very hard. I think other parts of the country and other parts of the world are easier.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_31692" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31692" style="width: 1195px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31692 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-10.jpeg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31692 size-full lazyload" alt=""James Rosenquist at the billboard factory, 1964, 2009" by Dennis Hopper, Photograph, gelatin silver print." width="1195" height="866" data-sizes="(max-width: 1195px) 100vw, 1195px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-10.jpeg 1195w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-10-380x275.jpeg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-10-760x551.jpeg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-10.jpeg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31692" class="wp-caption-text"><em>James Rosenquist at the billboard factory, 1964</em>, by actor Dennis Hopper, 2009, Photograph, gelatin silver print.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>What inspired you to create your own very distinctive style?</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/3Ag4ZoZGdbQ?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_08_16_00.Still001-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_08_16_00.Still001-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>My first inspirations, first starting, was that I thought I could devise a new space, from painting outdoor billboards in Times Square. And that was, as a kid I was subject to Rinso White commercials, early television commercials, our commercial society, which was quite unlike Russia, for instance. And I thought — my job was to paint big pictures of movie stars, and to paint objects to sell, and if I could paint them really well, the company would sell them, and if I didn’t, I’d get fired. I had to paint beer to look beautiful. I had to paint beautiful beer, beautiful shirts, beautiful everything. So a salesman would come in and say, “That beer’s got too much hops in it. Tell that kid to change it. Gotta change it.” So that only meant me making a slightly different color yellow, and repainting the whole damn thing slightly. So I’d take that beer with too much hops in it, that color, which was only yellow, I’d take that home with me. And I’d take Franco-American spaghetti orange, I’d take that home. Which was like red dye number 2 and yellow. I’d take that home and I’d make abstract paintings out of these. And then I thought, “Hey, I’ll use imagery, magnified imagery that spilled out of the picture plane, and I’d set it up so the closest thing you would see would be recognized last, because it would be too personal, and it would irritate people. So that’s how my so-called “Pop Art” paintings started. And I really used generic things, unlike say, Andy Warhol, who used Campbell’s Soup. I painted spaghetti, I painted soup, I painted hot dogs, jeans, I painted cars, all kinds of things, really generically. I didn’t care about the labels.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_31676" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31676" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31676 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Four-New-Clear-Women.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31676 size-full lazyload" alt=""Four New Clear Women" (1982) by James Rosenquist (oil on canvas)" width="2280" height="1283" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Four-New-Clear-Women.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Four-New-Clear-Women-380x214.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Four-New-Clear-Women-760x428.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Four-New-Clear-Women.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31676" class="wp-caption-text"><em>Four New Clear Women</em> (1982) by James Rosenquist (oil on canvas). <em>Four New Clear Women</em> is an iconic painting first exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1983. Its panoramic format and monumental scale is reminiscent of a billboard while the faces of the women depicted echo print advertising models. The splintered and interlacing imagery, characteristic of this period of Rosenquist’s work and inspired by the saw palmettos growing on his Florida property, is used as a device to compress more visual information into the painting by featuring two pictorial planes at once. The title is a word play: are the female political leaders of that time (such as Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and others), representing ‘four new, clear women,’ clear about nuclear threat, or are they ‘four nuclear women,’ leaving us with the ambiguity of whether or not they will be warmongers or peacemakers?</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>Where do your ideas come from? Do you work every day or do you need inspiration to start a new painting?</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/BwzkFAuztBM?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_10_59_08.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_10_59_08.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>James Rosenquist: Sometimes a title might occur to me. And a title will just stick out in my mind. And then I will think in terms, everything I think of I will think in terms of that title. For instance, I did a painting called <em>Four New Clear Women</em>. It meant, if women became powerful, and they are, like women who own large stock in the stock market, or become president like Golda Meir or Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, will they be “New Clear Women” or “Nuclear Women?” Will they blow us up, or are they smart? Something like that. So, then I met — there was this actress named Liv Ullmann, and she started painting. And she said, “Oh, what are you going to do next?” And I said, “I’m going to do <em>The Persistence of Electrical Nymphs in Space</em>.” And she said, “Oh, what’s that about?” and I said, “Well, that’s the sound of all the souls after the earth blows up.” And she says, “Oh, yeah.” That was very… she probably talked with Ingmar Bergman about that. But that was great. So those are titles that I would think about, before I would start working. Then, to think about how young people want to live in the future, too, is another interesting thing. People are animals, and still have all the vestigial… I mean still have all the vestiges. I mean they have claws, fangs, ears, noses, just like animals you see running around here. And then you go to New York, I see beautiful girls that have claws, fangs, noses, everything. And I see they are very sophisticated, and they smell nice, but they are still animals. So I wonder, how will a young person like to live, in a really high-tech environment, like say in a rocket ship, or in an apartment, or a business place like that, or would they prefer to live a pastoral life, like little lambs in a meadow? Would they like that? So I think that’s curious, what the future generations will select as an environment.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_31698" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31698" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31698 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-swimmer.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31698 size-full lazyload" alt=""The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (Painting I)" (1997-98): Brightly colored forms, astronomical imagery, and distinctive logos from advertisements and commercial package designs become distorted as they swirl around vortices in "The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (Painting I)." One of a series of three enormous collage paintings and one of the larger compositions at 11 x 90 feet, this work, according to Rosenquist, is a "diary of the terrible temper of the times," of the technological, economic, and political changes that have shaped the past century. It is also full of references to works from Rosenquist's earlier career. In addition to employing tropes such as swirling vortices and interwoven fragmented imagery, the artist also included the missile-shaped hair dryer from "F-111," though the blonde girl beneath it is absent. Rosenquist explained, "the little girl who was the pilot of the F-111 is now the heiress who controls Wall Street." Also prominent is a portion of Pablo Picasso's famous anti-war painting, "Guernica," which he created in response to the Nazi bombing of Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Instantly recognizable, a broken version of the painting appears to be caught up in the whirling "econo-mist" - a term that refers to the extensive and ever-changing cultural and economic systems in contemporary society. The series was originally commissioned in 1992 for the Deutsche Guggenheim Museum in East Berlin. The reunification of Germany was underway, and this marked an earlier effort to bring art into the culturally deprived (former) East Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The large-scale, rectangular painting wrapped around walls of a gallery on Unter den Linden. Rosenquist used the series in part to contemplate his place as an artist and individual at the end of the 20th century, a time of both tragic violence and vibrant abundance. The reappearance in this painting of images from his earlier work attests to that. " width="2280" height="1527" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-swimmer.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-swimmer-380x255.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-swimmer-760x509.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-swimmer.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31698" class="wp-caption-text"><em>The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (Painting I)</em> (1997-98): Brightly colored forms, astronomical imagery, and distinctive logos from advertisements and commercial package designs become distorted as they swirl around vortices in <em>The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (Painting I)</em>. One of a series of three enormous collage paintings and one of the larger compositions at 11 x 90 feet, this work, according to Rosenquist, is a “diary of the terrible temper of the times,” of the technological, economic, and political changes that have shaped the past century. It is also full of references to works from Rosenquist’s earlier career. In addition to employing tropes such as swirling vortices and interwoven fragmented imagery, the artist also included the missile-shaped hair dryer from <em>F-111</em>, though the blonde girl beneath it is absent. James Rosenquist explained, “the little girl who was the pilot of the F-111 is now the heiress who controls Wall Street.” Also prominent is a portion of Pablo Picasso’s famous anti-war painting, <em>Guernica</em>, which he created in response to the Nazi bombing of Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Instantly recognizable, a broken version of Pablo Picasso’s painting appears to be caught up in the whirling “econo-mist” – a term that refers to the extensive and ever-changing cultural and economic systems in contemporary American society. (© Rosenquist)</figcaption></figure> <p>I mean the environment is going to hell. There’s oil slicks all over, and Saddam Hussein burnt oil fields down, and all of that, and one wonders, “Will people get busy cleaning it up? Or are they interested?” Or whatever. It’s curious. So I’m interested as to what people will select.</p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/i6eh7YlUNdc?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.01_02_14_05.Still011-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.01_02_14_05.Still011-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I started making a painting that looked like people reincarnating into flowers, or starting to be intermixed with flora and fauna, and machines too. They were sort of pieces of flesh starting to be connected to machines, or to flowers, and I did those, and the images cut in shards so that with the least amount of suggestion, you could see an image of something, yet there was a whole ground to put another image in. There was a lot of area left over. And then that would be a specific image. And then the mixture of both of those, I was hoping for a third image. It would be as if… all artists have cross-hatched, including Michelangelo and Rembrandt and everybody — and that’s like scribbling, “Chhh chhh chhh” like that. And in those scribbles, I was doing one day, and in that, I thought, “Hey, in this cross-hatching, I could, like this for instance, put two images, overlap like this.” You could see both images at the same time and still have more area to paint in. And you could even describe with pieces of imagery, which no one has done before, yet. So, I mean, using imagery as a sketch to describe another image. That would be really confusing, or illuminating. So that was one inspiration.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_31694" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31694" style="width: 2257px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-31694 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751im_/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquistcover-1.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-31694 size-full lazyload" alt="Rosenquist's work was the subject of a 30-year retrospective held in Moscow in 1991, as the disintegrating Soviet Union opened its doors to modern art from the West. (© James Rosenquist/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY)" width="2257" height="1683" data-sizes="(max-width: 2257px) 100vw, 2257px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquistcover-1.jpg 2257w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquistcover-1-380x283.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051751im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquistcover-1-760x567.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751/https://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquistcover-1.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-31694" class="wp-caption-text">Rosenquist’s work was the subject of a 30-year retrospective held in Moscow in 1991, as the disintegrating Soviet Union opened its doors to modern art from the West. (© James Rosenquist/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY)</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>Do you feel like art chose you more than you chose art? That’s what we’ve heard from some other artists and musicians.</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051751if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/3D3olCD9Pdg?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_35_14_28.Still010-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquist-James-1991-MasterEdit.00_35_14_28.Still010-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>James Rosenquist: Well, if a person is born with talent to do a certain thing — I mean, can draw — it’s like the pronator muscle, like from mind to pointer. And being able to point and describe and even draw something simple, like a map — or that ability to point, to shoot an arrow, to shoot a gun, to describe — if someone has that, that’s talent. And then the next thing is to have the spirit to do something else. And I know. I was in Russia. I had a big show in Moscow recently, in January and February, and there were a lot of people who could draw well academically in there but didn’t have any spirit. It was missing. And they are really subjugated, and put down. So it takes a couple of things. It takes sort of an outgoing — well, not necessarily outgoing, but it takes — besides being able to say it, there has to be some need to say something. And again, there are a lot of people who have a great urge to say something, and don’t know how to do it. And that comes out too. That comes out in other forms. And it’s hard to say one is more valid. But I like defined performance.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Let’s talk about your background. You’ve been called a “prairie-thinking man.” I wonder if you could tell us what that means to you?</strong></p> <p>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!</p> <p><strong>But you do come from the prairie. Could you tell us about where you grew up?</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>What did your parents do when you were growing up?</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>What was it like there, during the Great Depression?</strong></p> <p>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 fistfight 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.</p> <p>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 Pollock.</p> <p><strong>Did you always want to be an artist?</strong></p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>What changed?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Well, because I could draw well… 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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p><strong>How did your parents react to your interest in art? It’s not a very practical career.</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: When I was little, they always let me make as big a mess as I wanted to. And I loved that. And I would do all sorts of things, and another thing, too, they always encouraged me to take off and travel. And that was freedom, I felt free. I think I got my talent from my mother and my aunt Dolores. My father was very mechanical and used to invent things. He worked in the aircraft industry and he’d invent on a lot of little things. And so, there is something from there, maybe. You know, that situation. And then, my family background, my father’s cousin, Albert Hedberg, who I was named after, was in the Army Air Corps, and he and my father were going to start an airline from North Dakota to Winnipeg, Canada, an international airline, then to deliver mail, and poor Albert crashed flying a Senator Schnitzler. He tried to make a forced landing in a farmer’s field, and they had carved a big ditch in it, and they were both totally smashed up. So that sort of stopped my father’s career at that point. So my family was interesting. And my grandfather, my father’s father, they were interesting people. So that sort of gave me an urge to move, to do something.</p> <p><strong>You say your mother and your aunt were talented?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: They painted. She could play the piano, she could paint. Yes.</p> <p><strong>Were there any books you remember that particularly inspired you, growing up?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Adventure stories. I was an only child, so when I was little I used to sneak away and go to the movies, and I saw some strange movies. It was in the ’40s, so <em>The Beast with Five Fingers</em>, <em>Lost Horizon</em>. The real one, that first came out, I saw that. The little girl in that movie, the little Chinese girl who turned out to be 800 years old when they crossed the mountains — later, at the National Endowment — I sat next to her. That’s Margot Albert, married to Eddie Albert. A tremendous woman. She’s Mexican and she knew Frida Kahlo. She knew a lot of people.</p> <p><strong>You did some traveling on your own when you were very young, in the 1950s. Could you tell us about that?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: After going to California in 1951, I was sort of a motorcycle enthusiast at that time, and so I hitchhiked down to Florida to see the 200-mile motorcycle race at Daytona Beach, and then I continued south and I went to Key West. I got to Key West, and there was a travel agency on Duval Street, and I said, “How much to Cuba?” And they said you could fly there, 25 dollars, round trip on an old Army C-46! So I walked out on to the field in the morning, and there was nothing there. There were no buildings, there was no maintenance, it was a grassy strip in Key West. And I’m sitting there on this little suitcase I’ve got. I’m sitting there, and up walks the stewardess, sort of bedraggled. She comes up there (yawns) like this, and then another one. They had a crew of about ten on this plane, a little airplane, a twin engine like a DC-3. So then the captain comes, and everybody stand in line, and they salute. It’s like very formal. The <em>Aerolineas Venezolanas</em>, I think it was, I don’t know. So we get on the plane, and I arrive and stay right across from <em>El Capitolio</em> in Havana, which has the big diamond in the floor. Maybe it’s a fake one now, I don’t know. And I had this little balcony overlooking the capitol. I stayed about a week, and I met students who could go to school free if they could get there, but they didn’t have enough money even to get on the bus to go there. Batista was around, and Fidel Castro was around in the back woods, and Batista was very bloody. He killed people left and right. In fact, the very room that I stayed in, one year later, there was some poor tourist from Philadelphia stayed there, and they shot 275 bullets in his room and killed him to pieces, and he was an innocent tourist. I saw the picture, and it was the very room I stayed in. So Cuba was beautiful. It was a very beautiful architecture, beautiful place. Lively. And now it’s different.</p> <p><strong>Could you tell us a little bit about your billboard painting days? You once described painting the saliva on Kirk Douglas’s tooth.</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: My audition for Artkraft Strauss was to paint Kirk Douglas’s picture about eight feet high. So I thought, “I want the job, so I am going to show them.” So I put tears in his eyes, the number five makeup on, saliva on his lips, I mean, he looked great, fabulous. And Mr. Strauss came by and he said, “Hire that young man!” He was 80 years old. “Hire him!” So I got the job. And the interesting things about painting signs is that the amount of paint you use is incredible. The people you work with are really incredible, because they have tons of experience painting. They know how to wrap the brushes, they are very practical. They know all the tricks of the trade of doing all sorts of funny things. And for instance, painting a clock on the Astor Victoria Theater, one of my helpers who was about 70 years old said, “Hey kid, do this.” And he tied a string on a gallon can of mineral spirit, and he started swinging it. And we are up seven stories and this can is swinging back and forth like this. And he says, “Now it’s four o’clock! Blam!” And he snaps the line, and I’ve got a line going that way, a big diagonal for one of the hands, so we can paint it. But all sorts of color mixing, too. And in volume. You know, like making big gallons and gallons of color. One time, we were going to paint <em>Separate Tables</em>, I think it was. And the background was all orange on the Astor Victoria Theater. And we mixed up all this paint in the truck. And we all jumped in the back of this flatbed truck. And the truck lurched on 11th Avenue, and all the paint spilled out of the truck onto Eleventh Avenue like a huge pancake. And I said — all these old men are afraid they are going to get fired — and I said, “Shovel some sand on it, and let’s get the hell out of here.” And the truck driver backed in with the four wheels in the back, and took off and left these four orange stripes right down to 45th and Broadway. We didn’t get caught, but it was funny. We dropped a gallon of purple paint off the Mayfair Theater, ten stories, and it went “Pow!” — like a light bulb, with purple — right at lunchtime. No one got hurt. It was just miraculous.</p> <p><strong>Did you have any close calls up there? It seems like pretty dangerous work.</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: A couple. I fell a few feet, so I decided to quit.</p> <p><strong>It’s hard not to make parallels between your life as a billboard painter and your life as an artist. How would you say the one influenced the other?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Well, I was fortunate. I was being forced to work very hard. I painted the equivalent of 14 one-man shows a year when I was painting signs. It had nothing up here. I mean it was just a lot of imagery. Then, when it comes to making art… So it was like training for the Olympics, and when the Olympics — when art — came along, it was really a pleasure. It was so easy. That was the thing, except the thinking, I mean, that’s important. But to be able to do it, I could do it. No problem. Very easy. But the hard thing is the idea, having an idea that you had never seen before, a reason that no one has ever seen. Not being afraid of showing it when everything else looks different and looks very acceptable. That’s hard to do.</p> <p>I think in the 1980s, the audience grew larger and larger, and a lot of youngsters — what I call youngsters, they are about 35 to 45 years old — had a much easier time than I did when I began. They sold their works for high prices quite easily. They’re good artists, too. They’re good, but that seemed to come to an abrupt end at the end of the ’80s and the beginning of the ’90s.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>So this show that I had recently in Moscow, all the work there was really done with a paintbrush and paint. I didn’t bring laser beams. I didn’t bring film, or anything electric there. I only brought things that the Russians could have done. The Russians paint with oil paint on canvas, so they could have made paintings like mine if they wanted to. That was the dialogue there. I wanted to keep it like that. I didn’t want it to be chauvinistic, and show them a lot of highfalutin’ things from the West that they could never have had. So saying, “If a person doesn’t have any money, it’s still possible to do something quite nice, quite simply.” Because after all, you can make a beautiful charcoal drawing with burnt wood!</p> <p><strong>One gets a stereotypical view of an artist’s life, which is that it’s a lonely pursuit, but you’ve enjoyed a life of adventure and travel. Is that possible for most artists?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: It really depends on one’s temperament or one’s personality. That has to do with women artists too. There are all sorts of conflicts with being a woman artist, for instance. There are some artists who just stand in front of their painting one to one, and they don’t have any assistance or any help. They are really private and that’s the way they probably like it. Joseph Cornell seemed like that. I used to know him quite well. He worked in his basement, in his habitat, as he called it, and he had these little boxes that he put things in and made adjustments, and he had a very peculiar kind of life, I think. He was very concerned with his brother and his mother. He had a brother who was a spastic person from something. And then there are the opposite end. Take a guy like Bob Rauschenberg that has an entourage, or like Andy Warhol, who has a whole lot of people around him. I have about ten people working, old and young, and we have traveled all over. Some people prefer to be alone, like Greta Garbo, other people like to have tons and tons of people around them. I like to have nice people around. I run into a lot of great people. Over the past 35 years, I probably have had 35 or 40 assistants, who all wanted to be artists, and they’re not. They’re something different. They’re a vice president in an electronics firm, or one person went to work with the BBC back in London. They’ve done different kinds of things. Life took them elsewhere. They didn’t do painting, they weren’t involved in the theater or the movies or painting or sculpture or something like that.</p> <p><strong>It’s a hard life, isn’t it, to be an artist full-time?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: I think being an artist is having courage to be original. It’s hard to describe, because many great artists, including Picasso, have all been influenced by the great master paintings, Spanish paintings, whatever. Their art has looked like them, they’ve been influenced by them, and then finally, they leap, they take off. And then they become themselves. Then it looks like they just came out of nowhere. Just like, “Pow!” So I’m a reactionary, and I sort of — I don’t like my work to look like anyone else’s. So 20 or 30 years ago, I knew a Japanese artist who won a scholarship to Majorca, and when he got there, he met a Swedish artist who was doing the same kind of calligraphy, so both of them promptly stopped that. So with the advent of communication, and the word getting around, and photographs getting around, I think that it’s less likely to copy, or to unknowingly work in a similar vein. And I think that’s interesting. But I think it’s important to learn how — it’s important to study, to learn. To polish up on drawing, which is very academic. Like drawing from plaster casts, because it’s handy to be able to know how to do that. And then when you have everything polished, and all your senses ready, then if an idea does happen, you can do something about it. You can maybe convince yourself with your abilities that way. Because a lot of art is well meant, but it looks like child’s play, or it looks like anyone could have done that. And it’s hard to see through that veil to see what the artist is really getting at.</p> <p><strong>How did you respond to criticism early on? Did you take it seriously?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Criticism in the art world is much different than say, the theater world, where a big, mass effort lives or dies according to a theater critic. An artist is happy if they get their picture shown or their name in print. I mean, I’ve been called everything. I’ve been called “death warmed over” by John Canaday and everything else. I wrote him back a letter in <em>The New York Times</em>, saying I know more about death than he does. So he quit writing the art criticism, and started doing cooking! But when a young artist starts, and everyone says he or she is a genius, and they are put in all sorts of shows, and then they decline, things decline, and they are taken out of a show, or they are not put in, that can be rough on some people, to get your first hard criticism. If you withstand that, and just continue to work, you become resilient, and then you sort of get hardened to criticism, and it really doesn’t mean a thing. I mean, the criticisms I like is if they have got a handle on what I’m trying to do, whether I’m successful or not. If they have an inclination about this is the direction that I’m going in, instead of being totally confused, and they say, “It’s terrible! It’s horrible!” and they haven’t got a clue, and it’s all confused as to the momentum of what it is. That I don’t like. I mean, I like criticism though. It’s other people’s input, other people’s idea. And I think it would be very hard to be an art critic, or any kind of a critic, because it would be hard to be in people’s minds. I was on a panel discussion with Marshall McLuhan, back in 1966 or ’67. Phillip Morris put us there. And someone in the audience says, “Mr. McLuhan, I read all your books, and I happen to disagree with naw-naw-naw-naw… something.” And he says, “Oh, you’ve read all my books? Then you only know half the story.” So it’s hard to figure out. Someone asked him, “Mr. McLuhan, can you tell me the metaphor between this and that?” And he says, “Metaphor. Metaphor. A man’s grasp must exceed his reach, or what’s a metaphor?”</p> <p><strong>Don’t you have to have kind of a thick skin, though? If somebody calls your work “death warmed over?”</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: There are art critics who are extremely stupid. I don’t want to mention their names, but the one is Hilton Kramer, I can mention his name. They paint a little bit themselves, and they really don’t know how to paint very well, and then they think art should be this or should be that, because they’ve tried, and they know it’s hard, but they resent it if they think you have some shortcut to fame, or some shortcut to something. A lot of people are baffled by money too, including art critics. Baffled. They don’t know how to handle that. Artists are baffled by money too. They’ll say, “Man, I do it because it’s art, man. I love it. It’s art, but how come I don’t get any respect? Now how come I don’t sell any paintings?” And one minute, “Hey, take it. It’s free, it’s yours.” And the next — and then an art dealer will make money, sell it and make money, and they won’t get much, and then they complain. Printmakers are like that. They say they don’t get no respect. But if someone makes money from one’s work, I think a person should benefit from that. I lobbied at the doorways of the Senate with Marion Javits and Bob Rauschenberg for an artists’ royalty law, 15 percent. And it passed the Senate, but it failed the House.</p> <p>That’s way back in the ’70s. Now that’s been put to bed. A law was passed in California for one percent, I think, by Alan Sieroty. It’s like my friend Jerry Leiber, who wrote “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog.” I said, “How much did you get for that?”</p> <p><strong>A lot of songwriters got ripped off in those days. Getting back to inspiration, you talked about starting off with a title sometimes, but is there more to it?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: I think another idea about making things or creating things is to accumulate a number of experiences or ideas, or senses, or feelings, and then try to figure out what medium to put them in. Instead of saying, “Well I’m going to paint this.” Or “I’m going to do a certain medium, but I don’t know how to do it.” The opposite would be to know how to paint very well and do a craft very well, but not have any ideas. So to take a number of feelings and try to put them together and make them more… be more impactive, or have more gravity, or I mean to take some very, very peculiar dreams, or anything, and manage to make something that will suggest what happened to you, the feelings that happened to you. So a feeling of falling out of an airplane, or the feeling of being up against a big billboard sign, huge, like being a bug up against the big, flat plane. Something that has to do with senses or feeling. How to show that to someone else, and how to make that, is a challenge, and how do you do that? One piece I did back in 1970 was a room of vertical colored panels, and then I put a dry ice fog on the floor and Claude Picasso came and started taking photographs of it. I had just met him. And the colors seemed to disappear right into the floor, and the floor seemed non-existent. It was a fog. And with reflective panels. So the reflection that went into the fog was very unusual too. Because the energy from the reflection disappeared as it went into the fog. So that’s the way I accomplished that feeling. I did one version that was called <em>Home Sweet Home</em>, and the other one was called <em>Slush Thrust</em>.</p> <p>Right now, I’m doing some things about time and clocks. I did a painting that has the minute and hour hands sticking straight out at you, like a knife that comes out of the surface of the canvas. Instead of going around like a clock, clockwise, it points out like this, like a knife. It comes out of the surface of the canvas. I’m doing some things like that. Also, I’ve been working with color blindness colors — they are close-value colors — to describe things that aren’t expressive or emotional. They are already-tested color dots, to test people for color blindness. That’s an interesting thing to do. And I just did a print for the Philadelphia Museum, and it has the outline of a light bulb. It’s all color blindness dots. It’s called <em>For the Young Artist</em>, and it has the letter I, the letter C, U, number 2, R, and a star. “I see you, too, are a star” in these color blindness dots. I did some paintings with a knife, fork, and spoon on a big color blindness plate with the earth and a meteor and a whole lot of other things. So when I’m working, the first priority when I start something new is how to devise a new pictorial idea that has never been seen before. Or in a new way, like using color blindness dots or whatever. The second is content. My first consideration is trying to show something in a way that’s never been seen before, and that’s also not trying to look like anyone else’s paintings.</p> <p><strong>Do you think of this experimentation as taking risks?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: It is. To do things that you feel like doing and not necessarily showing to anyone. A lot of young folks, a lot of young artists, think it’s like they’re working for a gallery. They make work, make paintings, make things. They send them right to the art gallery, and the gallery sells them or they don’t sell them. And there is another thing too, where an artist gets to be extremely successful and his work starts to go for millions, that risk of showing something new is very risky. Because people say, “Well, I didn’t like it. I don’t think I’m interested in that artist any more.”</p> <p><strong>Is there pressure to keep doing what’s already been successful?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Some. In the past, you’ve seen some influence on young artists to continue to do something that they can sell easily. I think if my work would go at a million dollars a crack — I’ve had paintings auctioned for over two million, but not straight-out sales of a million dollars — that I would continue to work as much as I felt like working, and only show a select few out of what I did. I wouldn’t even show them to friends probably. Maybe a few.</p> <p><strong>Why?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: When I started painting, and there wasn’t much of a market, and there wasn’t a big audience, there was a space of time — maybe a year — where I worked and they weren’t for sale. I didn’t have an accountant. I wasn’t involved in any business. I mean, having a gallery is putting your work up for sale. Boom! So I didn’t have that. And I think that’s a strength that a person has. So if someone says, “I don’t like that.” I say, “Oh, you don’t like that? You should see what else you wouldn’t like.” Because you have something over them. It’s that secret life there, somewhere, of these works. And if you want to show them, you can show them something. Instead of baring your soul and showing them everything.</p> <p>I’ve had over 11 retrospective exhibitions in America and in Europe, Russia. Every show has been far from being a complete retrospective, because lenders wouldn’t lend them. So I said, “Well if you think you like this, you should see what isn’t here!” So that’s another concept.</p> <p>I was in the Museum of Modern Art at the Cézanne show, and there was a young group of students in there — two students that said, “Hey! I can do that. I can paint like that.” You know, like that. I said, “Oh, you could?” I said, “Could you paint like that if this exhibition was in the next room, and the doors were locked and you weren’t able to see it? Then could you paint like that?” “Huh? What do you mean?” So if someone sees something, they can emulate it. You know, copy it. But if they didn’t see it, but it was there, like the forest, then that’s the hard part.</p> <p><strong>Creating the original idea?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Indeed. Indeed.</p> <p><strong>Is someone born with the courage to be original, or do you develop it?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: I don’t know. I think part of that can be fate, because you can be subjected to things you don’t really want to be subjected to. You could be exposed to life, you have no control over it. And from that comes inspiration. I really couldn’t say. I don’t think suffering brings about great art. I think if you have a little easier time, you could do better things. I don’t think one has to suffer to make art. An example of that is in Israel, where they have suffered for quite a long time, and the art doesn’t look so good. The sculpture looks like battlement placements, and it’s not happy. It’s kind of corny. Some. I’m not saying all of it, but continual war doesn’t certainly bring inspiration.</p> <p><strong>Looking at the ups and downs of your own career, what advice would you have for young people starting out? What do you think are the most important things to keep in mind?</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Always, in the back of your mind, plan a special place where you’d like to be. Whether it’s mental or physical, for some time in the future, a kind of surroundings you’d like, the kind of life you think you can imagine. The ideal kind of place you would like to live. An ideal kind of work, something like that. So that, for instance, it seems that one’s life is always dictated by things. It could be fate, it could be your boss, it could be any kind of thing. And to overcome that by feeling or saying that I know that when I am a little bit older I know where it’s going to take me, but I am going to be in a different place than I am now. I don’t know if I will like it, but I will wake up there. It’s hard to explain. I mean, not hard to explain, it’s a rather self-conscious idea about changing yourself from the outside in, or the inside out. And at least knowing you will be in a different environment, or a better place, something like that. It’s naïve to think that young suicidal people could just jump on a plane and go somewhere that’s nice, and their problems would be solved. But there is a lot of say about environment and peers, peers and environment, which seem to be a dead end. And if one can imagine a place that they might like, they can build it or make it. I think they can fabricate it.</p> <p><strong>That sounds like a sense that you have some control over your life, instead of just being a victim of circumstance.</strong></p> <p>James Rosenquist: Whether you like it or not, after five years passes, after five years go by, you will be five years older. Things may change for the better or they may change for the worse, but you are going to be five years older! Or in ten years you will be ten years older. And in that time, you can be living a much nicer life, a more productive life, more fun, more everything. Or that life will be dictated by someone else. So I’ve told that to people who work for me. I said, “Hell,” I said, “I don’t mind if you leave and go on to something else. I like to know successful people.” And I’ve worked with guys; I worked with Fred Clark who used to deliver my paintings in a laundry truck. And now Fred is a big actor in Hollywood. He had a runny nose, and a little son to support, and he was living from hand to mouth, and now his name is Matt Clark and he’s been in movies with John Wayne, and he’s in movies constantly. He plays judges and tough guys and cowboys and everything like that. It’s fun to know happy ending stories, but I also know of stories of people who really have nothing and became successful. That’s fun.</p> <p><strong>And it was fun talking to you. Thank you so much.</strong></p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">James Rosenquist Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>37 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66973684210526" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-swimmer.jpg" data-image-caption=""The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (Painting I)" (1997-98): Brightly colored forms, astronomical imagery, and distinctive logos from advertisements and commercial package designs become distorted as they swirl around vortices in "The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (Painting I)." One of a series of three enormous collage paintings and one of the larger compositions at 11 x 90 feet, this work, according to Rosenquist, is a "diary of the terrible temper of the times," of the technological, economic, and political changes that have shaped the past century. It is also full of references to works from Rosenquist's earlier career. In addition to employing tropes such as swirling vortices and interwoven fragmented imagery, the artist also included the missile-shaped hair dryer from "F-111," though the blonde girl beneath it is absent. Rosenquist explained, "the little girl who was the pilot of the F-111 is now the heiress who controls Wall Street." Also prominent is a portion of Pablo Picasso's famous anti-war painting, "Guernica," which he created in response to the Nazi bombing of Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Instantly recognizable, a broken version of the painting appears to be caught up in the whirling "econo-mist" - a term that refers to the extensive and ever-changing cultural and economic systems in contemporary society. The series was originally commissioned in 1992 for the Deutsche Guggenheim Museum in East Berlin. The reunification of Germany was underway, and this marked an earlier effort to bring art into the culturally deprived (former) East Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The large-scale, rectangular painting wrapped around walls of a gallery on Unter den Linden. Rosenquist used the series in part to contemplate his place as an artist and individual at the end of the 20th century, a time of both tragic violence and vibrant abundance. The reappearance in this painting of images from his earlier work attests to that. " data-image-copyright="the-swimmer" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-swimmer-380x255.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-swimmer-760x509.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.37631578947368" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-stowaway.jpg" data-image-caption="2000: "Stowaway Peers Out of the Speed of Light." During the late 1990s, Rosenquist began incorporating abstraction into his billboard-size collage paintings. "Stowaway Peers Out of the Speed of Light" features brightly colored, distorted, and compressed forms whirling through space amidst layers of sleek, reflective vortices. The seemingly chaotic composition is part of the "Speed of Light" series, which explores vision in motion. Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and the speed of light, Stowaway addresses how people see and understand the same image differently. Rosenquist explained: "In Einstein's study of the speed of light, apparently the speeding person looks out of the window [sic], and the view is altered because of the tremendous speed. And then the spectator, watching the speeding person — the look of that is also altered. Things are crammed together, and they're foreshortened. It's a pun, really. Like the difference between the artist and the critic, how different people see different things." Although Rosenquist's process of creation remains the same, this painting attests to the artist's rediscovered admiration for the gestural paintings of Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. This transition from focusing exclusively on the mass media and consumer imagery of his earlier career to addressing intersections between science and aesthetics lends Rosenquist's later work new relevance. He continues to hearken back to his career as a billboard painter, but with different results. "Underneath it all is all my experience," the artist says of the series. "The paintings are about my imagination as to a new view, or a new look at the speed of light. And they also have to do with the whole history of my experience put into a painting." (Oil on canvas. Collection of the artist.)" data-image-copyright="the-stowaway" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-stowaway-380x143.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-stowaway-760x286.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.7592592592593" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James1938-1.jpg" data-image-caption="1938: A son of the Great Plains, five-year-old James Rosenquist in North Dakota. "When I was little, they always let me make as big a mess as I wanted to."" data-image-copyright="james1938-1" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James1938-1-216x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James1938-1-432x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0079575596817" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-Serenade-for-the-Doll-after-Claude-Debussy-Gift-Wrapped-Doll-16-.jpg" data-image-caption="1992: Gift Wrapped Doll #16. This painting, one of 12 in this series exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1993, presents a partial frontal view of a doll wrapped in cellophane. Painted on a large scale (60 x 60 inches), the doll speaks to the innocence of childhood, while its wide-eyed expression suggests surprise or fright, as if being suffocated by the cellophane that distorts its features. The effect is disconcerting for the viewer and reminiscent of the deep human understanding that dolls can be both comforting and frightening. The work follows in a tradition of art made with dolls, and particularly references the Surrealist fascination with dolls and toys evident in the work of artists such as Hans Bellmer. The title refers to a work by French composer Claude Debussy, whose musical composition "Serenade of the Doll" was written for his daughter. Indeed, Rosenquist's painting was inspired in large part by his own experience as a father raising his then young daughter Lily. However, James Rosenquist's work is not so much an examination of childhood as a statement about the world that his daughter will inhabit." data-image-copyright="the-serenade-for-the-doll-after-claude-debussy-gift-wrapped-doll-16" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-Serenade-for-the-Doll-after-Claude-Debussy-Gift-Wrapped-Doll-16--377x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-Serenade-for-the-Doll-after-Claude-Debussy-Gift-Wrapped-Doll-16--754x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.71973684210526" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-web.jpg" data-image-caption=""James Rosenquist at the billboard factory, 1964, 2009" by Dennis Hopper, photograph, gelatin silver print." data-image-copyright="rosenquist-web" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-web-380x273.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-web-760x547.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.74605263157895" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquistcover-1.jpg" data-image-caption="Rosenquist's work was the subject of a 30-year retrospective held in Moscow in 1991, as the disintegrating Soviet Union opened its doors to modern art from the West. (© James Rosenquist/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY)" data-image-copyright="rosenquistcover-1" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquistcover-1-380x283.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Rosenquistcover-1-760x567.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2199036918138" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist1985.jpg" data-image-caption="1985: Rosenquist in his studio." data-image-copyright="1985: Rosenquist in his studio." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist1985-312x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist1985-623x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.48552631578947" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist_91880_1.jpg" data-image-caption="1975: "Violet Turn" by James Rosenquist" data-image-copyright="rosenquist_91880_1" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist_91880_1-380x185.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist_91880_1-760x369.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5049504950495" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-billboard.jpg" data-image-caption="1958: James Rosenquist painting a billboard on 47th Street and Broadway in New York." data-image-copyright="rosenquist-billboard" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-billboard-252x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/rosenquist-billboard-505x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.63421052631579" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/president-elect.jpg" data-image-caption=""President Elect" (1960-61): Like many Pop artists, Rosenquist was fascinated by the popularization of political and cultural figures in mass media. In his billboard-style painting "President Elect," the artist fuses Madison Avenue caliber advertising with political ambition by depicting John F. Kennedy's smiling face alongside consumer items — namely, a yellow Chevrolet and a slice of cake from an ad. Rosenquist created the collage using images cut from their original context that he adapted to fit a monumental scale in a photo-realistic style. As Rosenquist explains, "The face was from Kennedy's campaign poster. I was very interested at that time in people who advertised themselves. Why did they put up an advertisement of themselves? So that was his face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a piece of stale cake." Considered the artist's breakthrough work, "President Elect" speaks to Rosenquist's fascination with subliminal persuasion through advertising. Rosenquist had a strong interest in the imagery of advertising, and wanted to translate its power into his artwork: "Painting is probably much more exciting than advertising," he said, "so why shouldn't it be done with that power and gusto, with that impact." This large-scale work exemplifies Rosenquist's technique of combining discrete images through techniques of blending, interlocking, and juxtaposition, as well as his skill at including political and social commentary using popular imagery. By placing Kennedy, the first presidential candidate to harness mass media to benefit his campaign, in the same frame as a sleek, powerful 1949 Chevy and dainty fingers caressing cake, the artist suggests the three subjects are similarly neatly packaged, marketed as desirable, and sold to the American people. At the same time, here Kennedy becomes a symbol of post-war American abundance. (Oil on masonite. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.)" data-image-copyright="president-elect" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/president-elect-380x241.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/president-elect-760x482.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3103448275862" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/marilynmonroe.jpg" data-image-caption=""Marilyn Monroe, I" (1962): James Rosenquist painted this inverted and fragmented portrait of Marilyn Monroe just following her unexpected death in 1962. Like fellow Pop artist Andy Warhol, Rosenquist transformed Marilyn's iconic image. But whereas Warhol used well-known photographs of the celebrity sex symbol repetitiously, Rosenquist chose to present her in a manner that denied immediate recognition, while preserving her coquettishness. He achieved this by breaking apart her eyes, lips, and hand, reassembling the pieces into a seemingly random configuration, and boldly overlaying letters that are themselves fragments of her name. Below the lettering appears a fragment of the word "Coca-Cola" in the soda's trademark script. Through this association with branding, mass-production, and popular culture, the artist draws attention not so much to Monroe as a person, but as to how she was packaged in the mass media and marketed based on her sex appeal, here synecdochically referred to through images of her smiling mouth and attractive blue eyes artistically repackaged. Rosenquist's painting of Marilyn Monroe is one of countless others painted by his contemporaries, including Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning, that attest to the increasing power of mass media and its impact on art production during the 1960s. (Oil and spray enamel on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, New York)" data-image-copyright="marilynmonroe" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/marilynmonroe-290x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/marilynmonroe-580x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.60657894736842" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Jamesa1935-1.jpg" data-image-caption="1937: James Rosenquist, age four, with his parents in North Dakota." data-image-copyright="1937: James Rosenquist, age four, with his parents in North Dakota." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Jamesa1935-1-380x230.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Jamesa1935-1-760x461.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.75" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Leaky-Ride-for-Dr-Leakey.jpg" data-image-caption="1983: "Leaky Ride for Dr. Leakey" by James Rosenquist" data-image-copyright="James Rosenquist, Leaky Ride for Dr. Leakey, 1983" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Leaky-Ride-for-Dr-Leakey-380x285.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Leaky-Ride-for-Dr-Leakey-760x570.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5866388308977" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JR-in-paper-suit-NYC-1956-1.jpg" data-image-caption="James Rosenquist being admired in the garment district in New York. In 1966, he commissioned the fashion designer Horst to tailor a suit made out of brown paper, which he wore to museum and gallery openings. "The idea of the paper suit was that it was disposable — and fed into the disposable idea, the disposable person."" data-image-copyright="jr-in-paper-suit-nyc-1956-1" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JR-in-paper-suit-NYC-1956-1-239x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JR-in-paper-suit-NYC-1956-1-479x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James-Rosenquist-for-web.jpg" data-image-caption="James Rosenquist" data-image-copyright="james-rosenquist-for-web" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James-Rosenquist-for-web-380x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James-Rosenquist-for-web-760x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4393939393939" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JamesRosenquist-F-111.jpg" data-image-caption=""F-111" (detail), 1964-65: Oil on canvas and aluminum. 10 ft. x 86 ft. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. James Rosenquist began to paint the 86-foot-long "F-111" in 1964, in the middle of one of this country’s most turbulent decades. Inspired by advertising billboards and by earlier mural-scaled paintings, such as Claude Monet’s "Water Lilies," he designed its 23 panels to wrap around the four walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery at 4 East 77th Street in Manhattan, where it would be displayed the following year. Rosenquist took as his subject the F-111 fighter bomber plane, the newest, most technologically advanced weapon in development at the time, and positioned it, as he later explained, “flying through the flak of consumer society to question the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising.” Its jumps of scale, collage-like juxtaposition of fragments of imagery, and gloriously vivid palette exemplify the style that defines Rosenquist’s singular contribution to Pop art in the United States. For this special installation, located outside the entrance to the fourth-floor Painting and Sculpture galleries, "F-111" will be presented as it was first exhibited at the Castelli Gallery in 1965." data-image-copyright="jamesrosenquist-f-111" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JamesRosenquist-F-111-264x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/JamesRosenquist-F-111-528x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66315789473684" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James_Rosenquist_f-111_MoMA.jpg" data-image-caption=""F-111," exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. James Rosenquist began to paint the 86-foot-long "F-111" in 1964, in the middle of one of this country’s most turbulent decades. Inspired by advertising billboards and by earlier mural-scaled paintings, such as Claude Monet’s "Water Lilies," he designed its 23 panels to wrap around the four walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery at 4 East 77th Street in Manhattan, where it would be displayed the following year. Rosenquist took as his subject the F-111 fighter bomber plane, the newest, most technologically advanced weapon in development at the time, and positioned it, as he later explained, “flying through the flak of consumer society to question the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising.” Its jumps of scale, collage-like juxtaposition of fragments of imagery, and gloriously vivid palette exemplify the style that defines Rosenquist’s singular contribution to Pop art in the United States. For this special installation, located outside the entrance to the fourth-floor Painting and Sculpture galleries, "F-111" is presented as it was first exhibited at the Castelli Gallery in 1965." data-image-copyright="james_rosenquist_f-111_moma" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James_Rosenquist_f-111_MoMA-380x252.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/James_Rosenquist_f-111_MoMA-760x504.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.88552631578947" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/iloveyouwithmyford.jpg" data-image-caption="James Rosenquist's “I Love You with My Ford” (1961)" data-image-copyright="James Rosenquist, “I Love You with My Ford” (1961)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/iloveyouwithmyford-380x336.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/iloveyouwithmyford-760x673.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68552631578947" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1341-James-Rosenquist-02.jpg" data-image-caption="James Rosenquist in his studio with "Paint Brush," 1964. (Archives of American Art/Ellen Hulda)" data-image-copyright="1341-james-rosenquist-02" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1341-James-Rosenquist-02-380x260.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1341-James-Rosenquist-02-760x521.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.45263157894737" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/houseoffire.jpg" data-image-caption=""House of Fire" (1981) by James Rosenquist (oil on canvas). Trained as a billboard painter, Rosenquist began creating large-scale, lavishly composed works as a Pop artist in the 1960s. "House of Fire" exudes the dynamism and sensuous polish that have characterized his work since that period. In this allegorical triptych, prosaic objects become strangely treacherous: a grocery bag is mysteriously suspended in air, a supernaturally radiant bucket of molten steel descends through a window, and fiery lipsticks align like a battery of guns. The allusions to violence, sex, and consumerism recall earlier works such as the artist's monumental "F-111" of 1965, which mixes imagery of a U.S. Air Force fighter-bomber with that of a child and a mass of spaghetti, producing a heightened sense of seduction and danger." data-image-copyright="houseoffire" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/houseoffire-380x172.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/houseoffire-760x344.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.62631578947368" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/HomeSweetHome-1.jpg" data-image-caption=""Horizon Home Sweet Home" (1970) by James Rosenquist" data-image-copyright="1970, Horizon Home Sweet Home, James Rosenquist" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/HomeSweetHome-1-380x238.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/HomeSweetHome-1-760x476.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3793103448276" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/header_James-Rosenquist-115.jpg" data-image-caption="James Rosenquist in his Aripeka, Florida studio, 1988. (Photo by Russ Blaise)" data-image-copyright="header_james-rosenquist-115" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/header_James-Rosenquist-115-275x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/header_James-Rosenquist-115-551x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.56315789473684" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Four-New-Clear-Women.jpg" data-image-caption=""Four New Clear Women" (1982) by James Rosenquist (oil on canvas)" data-image-copyright="1982, Four New Clear Women, Oil on canvas," data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Four-New-Clear-Women-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Four-New-Clear-Women-760x428.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67236842105263" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21495997.jpg" data-image-caption="1966: James Rosenquist in his Broome Street studio. (Image by © Bob Adelman/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="Artist James Rosenquist" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21495997-380x256.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21495997-760x511.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.11842105263158" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f111_large.jpg" data-image-caption="1964-65: James Rosenquist's breakthrough work, the iconic "F-111"— 51 panels that total over 22 by 24 feet—juxtaposes an American fighter plane with a Firestone tire, garish orange-tinned spaghetti, and a young girl under a hair dryer. Artwork description and analysis: The most ambitious of Rosenquist's collage paintings, "F-111" stretches 86 feet long across 23 canvas panels and aluminum sections, encompassing a viewer's entire field of vision. The painting depicts a full-scale, 73-foot-long "F-111" fighter plane interrupted by assorted images derived from billboards and advertisements of the day rendered large and in clashing, day-glo colors. Among the fragmentary advertisements are a tire, a cake, air bubbles, spaghetti, a light bulb, and a young girl using a hair dryer that resembles a missile head. Disturbingly, there is also a beach umbrella juxtaposed onto an atomic explosion, making reference to a particular military euphemism used at the time: "nuclear umbrella." Created during the Vietnam War, F-111 mixes fragments of consumer advertising (of the sort and scale that Rosenquist had become familiar with in his earlier career as a billboard painter) with military imagery, evoking what President Dwight Eisenhower warned of in his departing 1961 address as "the military-industrial complex." Indeed, the F-111 bomber represented the latest technological innovation in warfare and cost millions to develop. In an interview, Rosenquist imagined a man who "has a contract from the company making the bomber, and he plans his third automobile and his fifth child because he is a technician and has work for the next couple of years....the prime force of this thing has been to keep people working, an economic tool; but behind it, this is a war machine." By offering a vision of this jet, as Rosenquist described it, "flying through the flak of consumer society to question the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising," F-111 suggests c" data-image-copyright="473.1996.a-w" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f111_large-380x45.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f111_large-760x90.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.69342105263158" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/030-gianfranco-gorgoni-theredlist.jpg" data-image-caption="James Rosenquist, New York, 1973 (Gianfranco Gorgoni)" data-image-copyright="James Rosenquist, NY, 1973 (Gianfranco Gorgoni)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/030-gianfranco-gorgoni-theredlist-380x263.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/030-gianfranco-gorgoni-theredlist-760x527.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4100185528757" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f6fcc3ba2149786579619693fb39afb4.jpg" data-image-caption=""Marilyn Monroe, I" (1962): James Rosenquist painted this inverted and fragmented portrait of Marilyn Monroe just following her unexpected death in 1962. Like fellow Pop artist Andy Warhol, Rosenquist transformed Marilyn's iconic image. But whereas Warhol used well-known photographs of the celebrity sex symbol repetitiously, Rosenquist chose to present her in a manner that denied immediate recognition, while preserving her coquettishness. He achieved this by breaking apart her eyes, lips, and hand, reassembling the pieces into a seemingly random configuration, and boldly overlaying letters that are themselves fragments of her name. Below the lettering appears a fragment of the word "Coca-Cola" in the soda's trademark script. Through this association with branding, mass-production, and popular culture, the artist draws attention not so much to Monroe as a person, but as to how she was packaged in the mass media and marketed based on her sex appeal, here synecdochically referred to through images of her smiling mouth and attractive blue eyes artistically repackaged. Rosenquist's painting of Marilyn Monroe is one of countless others painted by his contemporaries, including Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning, that attest to the increasing power of mass media and its impact on art production during the 1960s. (Oil and spray enamel on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, New York)" data-image-copyright="Marilyn 1974 by James Rosenquist born 1933" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f6fcc3ba2149786579619693fb39afb4-270x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f6fcc3ba2149786579619693fb39afb4-539x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.51184210526316" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DWF15-1008294.jpg" data-image-caption="2004, New York City: Visitors observe James Rosenquist's "F-111" in the newly renovated Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). After a two-year renovation, MOMA celebrated its reopening of the museum with free admission. (Michael Kim/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="MoMA Reopens After $858 Million Renovation" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DWF15-1008294-380x195.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DWF15-1008294-760x389.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66315789473684" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/09846730988942cd1be7929733579263.jpg" data-image-caption="James Rosenquist's "F-111" (1965). Oil on canvas with aluminum, 10'x86' : The most ambitious of Rosenquist's collage paintings, "F-111" stretches 86 feet long across 23 canvas panels and aluminum sections, encompassing a viewer's entire field of vision. The painting depicts a full-scale, 73-foot-long F-111 fighter plane interrupted by assorted images derived from billboards and advertisements of the day rendered large and in clashing, day-glo colors. Among the fragmentary advertisements are a tire, a cake, air bubbles, spaghetti, a light bulb, and a young girl using a hair dryer that resembles a missile head. Disturbingly, there is also a beach umbrella juxtaposed onto an atomic explosion, making reference to a particular military euphemism used at the time: "nuclear umbrella." Created during the Vietnam War, "F-111" mixes fragments of consumer advertising (of the sort and scale that Rosenquist had become familiar with in his earlier career as a billboard painter) with military imagery, evoking what President Dwight Eisenhower warned of in his departing 1961 address as "the military-industrial complex." Indeed, the F-111 bomber represented the latest technological innovation in warfare and cost millions to develop. In an interview, Rosenquist imagined a man who "has a contract from the company making the bomber, and he plans his third automobile and his fifth child because he is a technician and has work for the next couple of years... the prime force of this thing has been to keep people working, an economic tool; but behind it, this is a war machine." By offering a vision of this jet, as Rosenquist described it, "flying through the flak of consumer society to question the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising," "F-111" suggests complicity between this "war machine" and consumer culture. " data-image-copyright="IN2180" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/09846730988942cd1be7929733579263-380x252.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/09846730988942cd1be7929733579263-760x504.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.49473684210526" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/8838201582_f97d64fce6_o.jpg" data-image-caption=""Females and Flowers" (1964) by James Rosenquist (oil on canvas)" data-image-copyright="“Painting by James Rosenquist: Females and Flowers, 1984 (Oil" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/8838201582_f97d64fce6_o-380x188.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/8838201582_f97d64fce6_o-760x376.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.75789473684211" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/831-James-Rosenquist-01.jpg" data-image-caption="1983: James Rosenquist in his studio with "Leaky Ride for Dr. Leakey" in the background." data-image-copyright="831-james-rosenquist-01" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/831-James-Rosenquist-01-380x288.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/831-James-Rosenquist-01-760x576.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2881355932203" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/546b58be944fa.image_.jpg" data-image-caption="1963: James Rosenquist, shirtless, works on a lithography stone in his New York studio." data-image-copyright="546b58be944fa-image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/546b58be944fa.image_-295x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/546b58be944fa.image_-590x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.52763157894737" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21668042.jpg" data-image-caption="1981, New York: James Rosenquist in his studio in front of his painting entitled "Star Thief." (Bob Adelman/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="American pop artist James Rosenquist" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21668042-380x201.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/42-21668042-760x401.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68157894736842" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-83777206_master.jpg" data-image-caption="Portrait of five American pop artists, from left, Tom Wesselman (1931-2004), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol (1928-1987), and Swedish-born Claes Oldenburg, as they pose together in Warhol's loft, New York City, 1964. (Photo by Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Five Pop Artists" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-83777206_master-380x259.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-83777206_master-760x518.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66842105263158" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-144898575_master.jpg" data-image-caption="May 15, 1965: Artist James Rosenquist at Leo Castelli Gallery, where he is completing painting his landmark 86-foot anti-war painting "F-111," in New York City. (Photo by David Gahr/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="James Rosenquist" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-144898575_master-380x254.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-144898575_master-760x508.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.003963011889" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-533659998_master.jpg" data-image-caption="Artist James Rosenquist leans in front of his home in Bedford, New York. (Photo by Robin Holland/Corbis via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="James Rosenquist" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-533659998_master-380x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-GettyImages-533659998_master-757x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.71447368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-RosenquistGoldenPlate.jpg" data-image-caption="James Rosenquist presents the Academy's Golden Plate Award to architect Philip C. Johnson." data-image-copyright="wp-rosenquistgoldenplate" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-RosenquistGoldenPlate-380x272.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-RosenquistGoldenPlate-760x543.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Twitter"><i class="icon-icon_twitter-circle"></i></a></li>  <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-email" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever via Email"><i class="icon-icon_email-circle"></i></a></li> </ul> <time class="editorial-article__last-updated sans-6">This page last revised on June 25, 2018</time> <div class="sans-4"><a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/how-to-cite" target="_blank">How to cite this page</a></div> </footer> </div> <div class="container interview-related-achievers"> <hr class="m-t-3 m-b-3"/> <footer class="clearfix small-blocks text-xs-center"> <h3 class="m-b-3 serif-3">If you are inspired by this achiever’s story, you might also enjoy:</h3> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever public-service difficulty-with-school ambitious curious " data-year-inducted="2001" data-achiever-name="Brown"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/carter-j-brown/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/bro1-001-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/bro1-001-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">J. 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href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/hank-aaron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hank Aaron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/kareem-abdul-jabbar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/lynsey-addario/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lynsey Addario</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-albee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Albee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/tenley-albright-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tenley Albright, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/svetlana-alexievich/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Svetlana Alexievich</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/julie-andrews/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Julie Andrews</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-angelou/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Angelou</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/frances-h-arnold-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frances H. Arnold, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-d-ballard-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-roger-bannister-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Roger Bannister</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-banville/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Banville</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ehud-barak/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ehud Barak</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/lee-r-berger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lee R. Berger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-timothy-berners-lee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Tim Berners-Lee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/yogi-berra/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Yogi Berra</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/jeffrey-p-bezos/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeffrey P. Bezos</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/benazir-bhutto/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benazir Bhutto</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/simone-biles/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Simone Biles</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/keith-l-black/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Keith L. Black, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/elizabeth-blackburn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-boies-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Boies</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-c-bradlee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin C. Bradlee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sergey-brin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sergey Brin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/carter-j-brown/"><span class="achiever-list-name">J. Carter Brown</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/linda-buck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linda B. Buck, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/carol-burnett/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Burnett</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-h-w-bush/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George H. W. Bush</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/susan-butcher/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Susan Butcher</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-michael-caine/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Michael Caine</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-cameron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Cameron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-s-carson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin S. Carson, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-carter/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Carter</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/johnny-cash/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Cash</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William J. Clinton</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/francis-s-collins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/denton-a-cooley/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Denton A. Cooley, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis Ford Coppola</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-dalio/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Dalio</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Olivia de Havilland</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/michael-e-debakey-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/michael-dell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael S. Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/jennifer-a-doudna-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jennifer A. Doudna, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-s-fauci-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/peter-gabriel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peter Gabriel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/leymah-gbowee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leymah Gbowee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol W. Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-john-gurdon/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir John Gurdon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-b-maccready-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul B. MacCready, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/reinhold-messner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reinhold Messner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/lynn-nottage/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lynn Nottage</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/cal-ripken-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Cal Ripken Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony D. Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/martine-rothblatt-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. Smith</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-sondheim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Sondheim</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonia-sotomayor/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonia Sotomayor</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/wole-soyinka/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wole Soyinka</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/esperanza-spalding/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Esperanza Spalding</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martha Stewart</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hilary Swank</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/amy-tan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Amy Tan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-teller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Teller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/twyla-tharp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Twyla Tharp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/wayne-thiebaud/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wayne Thiebaud</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/lt-michael-e-thornton-usn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/clyde-tombaugh/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Clyde Tombaugh</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/charles-h-townes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Charles H. Townes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-trimble/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord David Trimble</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/ted-turner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert Edward (Ted) Turner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/desmond-tutu/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-updike/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Updike</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gore Vidal</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/antonio-villaraigosa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Antonio Villaraigosa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/lech-walesa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lech Walesa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/herschel-walker/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Herschel Walker</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Alice Waters</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-d-watson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James D. Watson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/andrew-weil-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Andrew Weil, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/leslie-h-wexner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leslie H. Wexner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/elie-wiesel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elie Wiesel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-o-wilson-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/oprah-winfrey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oprah Winfrey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/tom-wolfe/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tom Wolfe</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-wooden/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Wooden</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/bob-woodward/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bob Woodward</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/shinya-yamanaka-m-d-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-chuck-yeager/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Chuck Yeager, USAF</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051751/https://achievement.org/achiever/andrew-young/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Andrew J. 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