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One of Noel Rockmore's paintings leaned lightly against a wall, unassumingly looking up at passersby from its spot on the French Quarter sidewalk, when Shirley Marvin walked nearby sometime in 1961 or 1962.

"It was a small gallery, and the painting was leaning against the outside wall," Marvin remembers. "And I just liked it. I asked about it, it was unsigned, and (the owner) said 'well, there's an artist who used to live upstairs, but now he's working with Larry Borenstein if you want to get to him.' I think he sold (the painting) to me for $30."

It was an inauspicious start, but the chance encounter with the painting, relatively small and showing a child in an abandoned car, sparked a decades-long relationship and a lifelong journey for Marvin and her family. Noel Rockmore has only recently been discovered for what he truly was -- an unacknowledged master living and working in New Orleans just before the turn of the century -- and it's all the result of the forward-thinking Marvin. Now, the Louisiana Art and Science Museum will open an exhibition July 20 honoring not only Rockmore's work and life but also, for the first time, Marvin's place in it.

He was an eccentric -- the kind of artist you'd more easily find on a bench sidled up to the bar rather than his easel but who still managed to produce a prolific oeuvre. She was dependable -- a mother of three, a socialite amongst the arts crowd and an often political activist who sought equality for women and who once stood up to Earl Long over voting rights issues.

Marvin became friends with Borenstein, a local art collector and dealer who ran a gallery located in what's now Preservation Hall and eventually rented the space to the Jaffes to open the historic New Orleans venue. Marvin joined Borenstein's weekly morning coffee sessions with interesting locals, a kind of reborn Parisian salon behind the locked doors of Borenstein's gallery. There, she began her patronage and friendship with Rockmore, but not before he attempted to elevate the stakes.

"Well, he explained to me that he had a lot of married women and it worked out nicely and didn't interrupt their marriages, just a pleasant respite. I said, 'Well, I'd just as soon be friends and forget the rest of it,'" Marvin said, sitting below her favorite Rockmore. The 1960s scene of the "Figaro Cafe" hangs above her couch, the bright, plump figures enjoying a cup of coffee with the New York skyline in their own window.

The pair spent the next years becoming close, Marvin buying pieces whenever Rockmore suggested them to her, though often only letting her take home the ones Rockmore believed were good enough.

He'd come from a privileged artistic upbringing in New York. Rockmore's parents, Gladys Rockmore Davis and Floyd Davis, had received their own acclaim in illustrating, advertising and painting throughout World War II and bestowed upon their son the Davis name. After a successful few years in New York, Rockmore noticed the art world turning its gaze toward abstraction and pop art like that of Andy Warhol, and he felt there was no longer a place there for his own brand of Hieronymus Bosch-inspired realism.

Rockmore changed his name and fled to New Orleans to "dwell in creative obscurity," though he ensured others of his impending fame for the rest of his life. He led a hedonistic lifestyle, loving and celebrating hard, befriending the French Quarter characters who often became the subjects of his work.

"He was your quintessential bohemian, hard drinking, hard living guy in the Quarter," said LASM exhibit curator Elizabeth Weinstein.

But with Marvin, things were different.

"There was always a lot of drama," Marvin said. "I didn't go in for big dramatic relationships, actually. He used to hold court at one of the restaurants in New Orleans … and he invited me to come … and I was late, and he yelled when I came in and said, 'Where the hell have you been?'"

"I really didn't like being yelled at, so I left, and I didn't talk to him for three weeks or so. He didn't yell anymore."

Soon after Marvin joined Rockmore and the rest of Borenstein's artistic crowd, one of her sons fell ill and she could no longer make the drive in from her Baton Rouge home for the weekly salons. To make up for it, Rockmore sent Marvin a monthly sketchbook and they began a prolific epistolary correspondence.

Eventually, the years passed, and Marvin slowly built up a collection of some 1,400 works: paintings, collages, sketchbooks, plus of course the letters. She even kept copies of her own letters sent to Rockmore. ("I saved the letters that I wrote because he would always say, 'well you said this or that,'" Marvin said.") The artist continued his impassioned lifestyle and Marvin stayed busy and raised her children.

He was your quintessential bohemian. Hard drinking, hard living guy in the Quarter.

Rockmore eventually died in 1995, and Marvin's paintings found their way into storage units in New Orleans' central business district. Getting on in years, Marvin forgot the breadth of her collection and never let on to its size to her children. A decade later, Hurricane Katrina hit and Marvin asked her son, Rich, and his wife, Tee, to go inspect and check on the storage units.

"We were overwhelmed," Rich Marvin recalled. "We said, "Mom, you know, can you explain this?' And she said she thought (Rockmore) was an undiscovered master, and the only way he could ever be discovered is if someone kept a chunk of his collection together so that people could get an idea."

Since discovering the work, the Marvins created a website detailing Rockmore's history and have traveled across the country finding collectors and documenting works.

"Rockmore told everyone, 'After I'm gone, I'm going to be recognized as a master genius and all of these will be worth thousands, millions of dollars,'" Rich Marvin said. "Everyone heard that, and they hung onto it."

Despite all their travels, Tee Marvin said, "there's nothing like Shirley's collection."

"Rockmore wanted her to have many of the pieces," Tee Marvin explained.

Rockmore often said he created about 15,000 to 20,000 pieces, though the Marvins didn't totally believe the number until they got deep into their research.

A set of portraits Rockmore created of jazz musicians and which hung and sold at Preservation Hall numbers at about 750 alone, though Marvin said she only owns a handful because Rockmore didn't consider the series good enough for his patron, nor did he want to split the profits with Borenstein.

The artist created a vast array of series and saw himself through an equally vast expanse of artistic periods.

"We like to think of artists as having one style, one track they become known for, like one period of their output," Weinstein told NOLA.com. "Some can reinvent, but it builds on what they had before. Rockmore would pick up whatever style he was into and pick it up again at a different time. Think of one minute his work was very realist with a high level of draftsmanship, but another painting the same year you can hardly tell it's the same artist because the style is so different."

Weinstein points to a series in which Rockmore painted the ships at the port of New Orleans -- "an amazing number in a short period of time" -- but then never painted another ship again.

The LASM exhibition looks at about 40 of Rockmore's works from between 1955 and 1987 and includes panels on Rockmore's and Marvin's relationship.

"Her role was not in dictating to him what to paint. (Rockmore) wouldn't allow anyone to do that. What she did was helpful … they set boundaries, they were friends," Weinstein said. "She wasn't doing it because the work she owned would go up in value, but she did it because this artist was so talented, and he was not an easy person to be around."

Despite all the research, the Marvins and Weinstein both acknowledge the mystery Rockmore represents, this 1960s

Golden Era of the French Quarter Foundation

1971, February 26, Vieux Carre Courier - Rockmore Interview

New Orleans and Its Art

An interview with Noel Rockmore by Patrick Kelly

Good press or bad press can help of hinder most artists unless they’re “established,” meaning, for one thing, they’re beyond the vicissitudes of the press, the critics. For another, that they’ve jumped through the hoops held out by the aesthetes of academe (or teachers in art schools) and have competed successfully for awards. Then there’s the matter of getting into museums, the first step toward sanctification.

French Quarter resident and painter Noel Rockmore has exhibited at the Metropolitan, the MOMA, the Whitney, the Pennsylvania Academy and locally at the Delgado, among other places. He’s received awards. Two Tiffany Fellowships and several more, according to a 5-year-old biographical sketch. He received an Artist-in-Resident grant through the Ford Foundation in 1964. In 1965 LSU Press published the artist’s New Orleans Jazz Works - 80 plates of local jazz figures.

All this tells us where the artist has been and nothing about where he is now and/or where he is going. That’s the purpose of the following interview. Also, it speaks more for the painter than a list of past accomplishments that are akin to a military hero’s medals, meant to astound and convince - while asserting the wearer’s bravado and wherewithal. At 42, Rockmore has gone through all that.

Due to his subject matter he is sometimes considered a “New Orleans painter.” Actually, he is still very much a New York painter who has brought an alien attitude to an equally alien clime and social milieu. It’s a matter of the artist’s malapert temperament up against what he calls the “honest degeneracy” of the French Quarter - the result is a surreal imagery that penetrates the scabrous 3-dimensional exterior of the Vieux Carre to seek the psychic dimensions of the people who call the Quarter home.

You work both in New York and New Orleans as well as San Francisco. In New York especially there seems, well, seems to be something going on. In New Orleans there are artists, such as yourself, but you have to ferret them out, find them... You’re here for some reason. An influence maybe?

There is a reason to be in the Quarter. It relates to honest degeneracy. The cemeteries, the rooftops. That’s basically why I’m here and I think that’s why Tennessee Williams was attracted to the idea of here. Although he couldn’t work here. The proximity factor was so strong.

Could this “honest degeneracy” be interpreted as “inspiration”?

Part of inspiration is depression. The manic depressive streak with which creative works come about requires a combination of both - duality - requires both functioning. I think that New Orleans is essentially a depressing place. Meaning, a physically attractive place except for the tourist sort of thing, but you wake up in the morning, see the clouds, rooftops. You don’t see that in Manhattan. The Bronx is miles and miles long and has no charm at all. These are some of the reasons for staying here; it’s part of the city that has this quality. It’s like a stage set sometimes, though.

What kind of feeling do you get when you go back to New York?

I don’t get any kind of feeling. I got a studio in N.Y. and that’s New York. When an artist goes into a studio he isolates himself and by isolation he acquires a sense of secrecy. New York doesn’t involve me. You have to go into the subways and see rows of frightened people going to work every morning. Bored and full of hate.

But in New Orleans you aren’t confined to your studio. I’ve seen you out sketching...

Almost all my etchings and sketches are done in cafes and bars. I like to be around the noise of people without being disturbed by them. People know me and leave me alone.

You paint a lot of “characters” of the Quarter; actually, here they’re quite normal. People from across Canal St. are characters. You were sketching Paul Ernest a few days ago..holding a skull...

Paul of course is fascinating because he’s a walking skull, and we all are incipiently, but he is literally and that’s why he fascinates me. It’s as simple as that. When he holds the skull in his hand it’s a double portrait. It’s extraordinary... I think the situation down here in New Orleans is very bad. I think it should be. There should be a place in the United States that is as bad. Culturally. A completely hopeless, visually fascinating, backwater. Because the worst thing you could have here would be an art colony. It’s bad enough to have McCrady Art School, et cetera because it’s not that type of town. This town does not need an art center. If you took Lincoln Center and put it down next to the Trade Mart it would be the laughing stock of the world. It would be completely ridiculous.

It’d also go into bankruptcy...

It’d be like putting the UN Building in Mississippi. You can’t do it. You’ve got to leave it somewhat alone. It is a backwater. It’s not a metropolis. If you had 4 million more people you’d have 3 million more just like these who are here now. Almost identical, repetitious. The thing that makes this area fascinating is the folk art element, Sister Gertrude who is a religious fanatic artist and the jazz element that’s dying out rapidly, and so on. The greatest thing in New Orleans is probably the relationship of the cemeteries to a funeral band. And that’s something you won’t find anywhere else in the United States. And literally speaking, nowhere in the world. In Milan, you can see a funeral procession, but it’s an official, city procession. It’s entirely different. But we invented Jazz in this area. I think the attempt to achieve a minor supracultural area by certain galleries is ridiculous.

I agree. I think it will always fail. There will never be a Lincoln Center. Instead, we have something of a substitute that suits New Orleans, that football thing, the Super Dome. I think this is New Orleans’ Lincoln Center...

Probably...

How do you get your work to the public? Some artists have galleries, or showings and also the “open house” studio for prospective buyers. In New Orleans, for example, if you want something by Rockmore, from what I hear, you see Larry Borenstein. This is what I hear, I know neither of you only that Borenstein has a lot of your work.

I’d like to add that no one owns an artist’s work. It passes on through various hands. The person who buys the painting rents it. He dies, and it goes into other hands - or he sells it at a profit, a profit that usually doesn’t involve the artist.

It’s difficult to believe that some collectors or buyers - according to that - don’t own, physically possess, the paintings...

A lot of the problem is this, that they want to own what they can’t produce...

That’s a common thing...

Some of them buy what they think they can make it up with, but it has its limits. You can’t own a human being. You can relate to them. Some people don’t understand the relationship of Conweiller to Picasso, a dealer who allowed 10% of his work to be owned.

What about local galleries, in New Orleans, specifically the Quarter?

I think the Orleans Gallery is doing a great disservice to the area. They succeed in aping the situation of what they think is L.A, that is, aping N.Y. that reflects London which is also aping New York. This is not going to help New Orleans. The actual strength of an area that is non-indigenous to an art center has its own peculiar kind of art which is regional. I don’t mean bad regional art, of which there is plenty, but at the same time I don’t mean proto-Pop copies, of which there are tons. I walk down the street in New Orleans and I see ice cream dishes careening out of a window display, it could be a bakery, but it’s a gallery. That’s bad news. I saw that eight years ago.

Let’s talk about your “Homage to the French Quarter”...

That was a documentary. To my friends I describe it as not one of my good paintings even though I love it dearly, but it’s something I had to do. To me it’s a 19th century piece a la 1970 which is when it was done. You can’t do a good painting that way. It’s sort of a satire, but not really satirical. The best way I can describe it is to say simply it’s the world’s largest post card. That’s exactly what it is and some day people are going to realize that’s what it is.

It’s not a culmination of any style or combination of method, then.

No, no...

Nor does it mark a turning point...

No, this is something I had to step back to do because, you know, five years ago I wanted to do it. It’s not a creative thing. It’s...it’s a joke that took nine months to do.

What do you have in mind for the future? Is something planned or do you evolve aesthetically through experimentation...

No, I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going into a tremendous series in the next 20 years, 50"x70" approximately, imaginary compositions with motorcyclists, with a moon, that’ll be a latter day Rousseau’s “Sleeping Gypsy” almost. That’ll be the first composition and I’d like to do about 50. And then a series of imaginary visits to my studio with people like Mike Stark and Bill Russell and so on and some of the fantastic characters and friends I have here. The work is definitely getting more internal.

What’s this about the motorcycle?

You’re taking a classical idea, or form, that a hundred years ago might have been a man swimming alone by himself at night, for example, and putting him on a motorcycle and turning him into the machine he is. The motorcycle fascinates me because (A) I’ve never seen it painted accurately, and (B) because it conjures up all the surrealist imaginatory factors that can be utilized in a realist literal sense without distortion. I mean, they exist for themselves. (Pause) These guys are nuts! And their home is on wheels. It’s kind of tiny, but the “hog” is a floral still life to me. I see it as that any motorcycle painting I ever do will always have a bird in it, a little, tiny bird in the foreground wondering what the hell is happening.

The motorcyclist is sort of a “degeneracy” as you said earlier?

Well, he’s so far out that “degeneracy” is behind the time. Nevertheless, a fascinating and valid subject. This will be the first in a series over the next 20 years.

What do you think of the national art scene today, generally?

I think American art requires that American artists face responsibility on a large scale without using the scale as a shock element, which is unfortunately what happened with contemporary art and I’m completely against that.

What about the large canvasses in the area of someone like Frank Stella?

I think Frank Stella is absolutely dreadful. A real bore. And I can’t even think of anything to say about him. One Mondrian is more interesting and I think Mondrian is a bore - compared to Van Gogh. I’m really at a loss of words which is really an extraordinary situation for me.

Thank you.

Click to order our $20 book - "Noel Rockmore & Shirley Marvin - Our Journey to the Discovery of Rockmore" on eBay!

Golden Era of the French Quarter Foundation Non Profit Corp.

Directors: Tee & Rich Marvin
Email: Rich@frenchquarterproject.org