"Painting Below Zero - Notes on a Life in Art"

[chronicle]

(NY Times) - In his 1996 book, �True Colors: The Real Life of the Art
World� (Amazon.com: http://xrl.us/TrueColors ), Anthony Haden-Guest
wrote that the painter James Rosenquist possessed, most of the time, a
�preternaturally healthy glow, like a hand-colored photograph.� You
could say something similar about Mr. Rosenquist�s new memoir, which
is an unexpected treat � it�s a ruddy and humble book, lighted from
within by the author�s plainspoken, blue-collar charm.

Rosenquist came of age as a Pop artist in Manhattan during the 1960s,
alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. He knew everyone, and
seemed to be everywhere. He shared a studio building by the Lower
Manhattan waterfront with Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin; Jasper
Johns and Robert Rauschenberg painted nearby. He drank in the Cedar
Tavern with Willem de Kooning and LeRoi Jones.

�Painting Below Zero� (Amazon.com: http://xrl.us/PaintingZero ) might
easily have been, in other words, the kind of memoir that spills over
with acid-sketched action and incident, a compendium of art-world
gossip around the 1960s, �70s and �80s. And, for sure, there�s a bit
of that stuff in here.

Rosenquist describes strange nights in Hollywood accompanying the
actor Dennis Hopper, who �prowled through the unlocked houses of
aspiring actors and actresses.� Rosenquist gave a party for Abbie
Hoffman�s future girlfriend during which people danced indoors between
lighted road flares. The Warhol star Ultra Violet cavorted topless on
Mr. Rosenquist�s front lawn in East Hampton one Sunday morning just as
church was letting out. He was not all work and no play.

�Painting Below Zero� is hardly a tell-all, however. Instead it�s a
modest but inviting coming-of-age story, a calm self-portrait by an
unusual kind of Pop artist and an unusual kind of man..

Continued: http://xrl.us/PaintingZero2