A Raging Fire in the Art World—Literally

“Mother nature stepped in,” pop-art icon James Rosenquist told HPR when describing a fire that completely destroyed his Aripeka, Florida, studio and home in late April. Aripeka has been Rosenquist’s primary residence for nearly four decades. “A raging, raging forest fire burned everything . . . I lost 14 million dollars worth of art. It just couldn’t be stopped. I escaped with the clothes on my back.”

Included among the canvases destroyed is a mural-size painting Rosenquist designed and executed for the Plains Art Museum. “This is just a tragic loss,” Plains Director and CEO Colleen Sheehy said, “We are really, really saddened.”

In addition to the Plains mural, several canvases ready to be shipped to New York City’s Acquavella Gallery were also lost, along with a 133 feet French-government commissioned piece—a ceiling mural to be installed at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. Rosenquist acknowledged that a career-long collection of his prints “were also burned up.” A loss of this size in the international art community is shocking news. As Sheehy put it, “This is a huge loss for the art world. I can’t imagine this happening to any artist.”

Add to this, the destruction of personal belongings, collectibles, memorabilia, archived materials, address books, files, and yes, family picture albums, including those that once belonged to Rosenquist’s North Dakota mother, including a picture of the child Rosenquist with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Sadly, as is often the case with artworks, the Rosenquist paintings were not insured. According to the artist, whose early childhood was spent in Grand Forks, North Dakota, “If you look at paying the cost of insurance for paintings over the years, it can equal the cost of the artwork itself.” He added that he had insured the “contents” of his property, and that the “insurance company is being very fair” in the handling of these claims.

According to St Petersburg Times reporters, investigators from Florida’s Division of Forestry are continuing to search for the cause of the blaze. Rosenquist described a frightening account of the scene in which a fire-fighter’s life was in jeopardy, but thankfully, his life was not lost. “That’s the good thing,” Rosenquist said.

Moving forward has meant a retreat to his New York residence and a recent trip to D.C. where he was a dinner guest of Hillary Clinton and others at the State Department. “I did a lithograph for our Embassy program [which got him the invite] so I attended the dinner and chatted with Hillary,” he reported. In addition, Rosenquist is ready to resume painting, using his Aripeka guest house as a studio, and he is wrapping up work on a book about his life, which covers all periods, “from babyhood to the fire.” “I’m a busy boy,” he said with levity. The title of his autobiography is Painting Below Zero. It is due to be published in the fall of 2009.

When asked about his emotional response to such a tremendous loss, he admitted a reluctance to address the “emotions” of the situation right now. It’s apparent through conversation that his vision is to see far past the fire. His outgoing personality and Swedish tenacity seem, already, to be carrying him well beyond the tragedy, though reminders are everywhere.

He spoke of his daughter, the “lovely Lily,” who is a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. “I said to my daughter—she was working on a project—I’ve got a bull skull with big horns that you could use . . .” but he stopped himself, and what quickly followed was, “oops, I don’t have that anymore.” He spoke of similar instances—telling individuals he would send posters or prints to them, but his offers were followed once again by “oops, I don’t have that anymore.”

Rosenquist was partially responsible for bringing figurative imagery back into American art after an early-to-mid 20th century non-objective art drought—no small feat. He is a world renowned artist and a North Dakota Native Son. “Few share Dakota,” as a poet hath said. How true. A loss of this magnitude for James Rosenquist is a loss for all of us.