James Rosenquist Quotes

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

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

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

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

We are attacked by radio and television and visual communication at such speed and with such force that painting seems very old fashioned ... why shouldn't it be done with that power and gusto [of advertising], with that impact.

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

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

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

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

I don't do anecdotes. I accumulate experiences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whenever I got a new studio I made the largest possible painting, and since the ceiling was low, the painting became horizontal. As I changed studios and got larger spaces, I made bigger paintings.

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

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

I tell young people that the greatest paintings in museums are made with minerals mixed in oil smeared on cloth with the hair from the back of a pig's ear. It's that simple.

I was probably born with the ability to draw, but that does not make you an artist.

Warhol was questioning the capitalist society.

The image is not important.

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

If you are close to it, a big painting is just a feeling around you, that's all.

I can handle ups and downs.

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

History is remembered by its art, not its war machines.

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

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

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

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