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THE MAN IN THE PAPER SUIT
Doon Arbus

James Rosenquist and I were sitting at a table in a corner of the dimly-lit coffee house. He is all one color: a pale yellowish brown.

Rosenquist is one of the pioneer pop artists, a former sign painter who went on to greater things, including a very successful major exhibition of his works at the Venice Biennale this past summer. He was just about to leave for Tokyo, at the invitation of the Japanese government, to be present along with several other big names in American art at the opening of a comprehensive exhibit of American art since the end of World War II.
He wore the suit that has been causing so much excitement, the one he wore to a recent exhibition, the one that is made out of brown paper.

I kept looking at him, trying to think of something to say about the suit. After all, that's the whole point of our meeting: Why does James Rosenquist have a paper suit and how does it feel to wear one? I know how I'm feeling. Intimidated. There isn't anything to say about it that doesn't seem terribly obvious. I guess that's what makes it a Pop suit.

"Don't you get cold?"

"Oh no. It's like if you're walking down a windy street in the winter time and you hold a newspaper against your chest, you know, inside your coat, it'll keep you warm."

I had never tried, but it seemed to make sense. Isn't paper less porous than cloth? "Is it just a single layer of paper?"

"I don't know. I think maybe there's a layer of cloth in here somewhere." He opens the jacket and examines the inside where the lining might have been, but there seems to be nothing there but paper. "You know," he says thoughtfully, "I really like the way it's made. The way it's cut and put together." He runs his finger approvingly along the lapel. "Yes, it's very well tailored, don't you think?"

I reach across the table and hesitantly finger the edge of his sleeve. I had been wanting to touch it since the first moment I saw it, but I just hadn't dared. The paper has a light, dusty brown color and it's vertically striped with narrow ridges. It feels thicker and spongier than ordinary paper. In fact it really doesn't seem much like paper at all, except for the soft, crackley sound it makes when it creases.

"Nice, huh?" says Rosenquist. "Isn't it light? And it's so comfortable to move around in." Rosenquist is squirming luxuriously, as if to prove it is comfortable.

The waitress is standing beside him with the liverwurst and onion sandwich he ordered. Rosenquist opens his napkin and places it on his lap, eyeing the sandwich with relish as the waitress places it in front of him.

"I'm hungry." He picks up a sandwich half, holds it up in front of him and gazes steadily at it. "There have been times in my life ... it happened when I was 26 and last year, too . . ." He takes a bite of the sandwich. ". . . I'll be working on something. Plugging along, you know. Sort of in the dark. And suddenly way out there, I see a little pin of light. So far away. All I know is that's where I have to go. And I think, 'It's going to take so much work.' But I have to do it. So I work and I work and I work and after a long long time, when I am almost there ... POW ... I see another tiny light way off in another direction. And I've got to pull up and start going toward that light. That is where I have to go . . . " Rosenquist shakes his head in mock dismay. He smiles vacantly at me.

"Tell me why you had the suit made."

He nods. "Well, whenever I go to the galleries or to an opening or something like that, you know, like going to Tokyo, I have to decide what to wear. I have clothes in my closet, you know, suits. But I go up to visit friends of mine all the time, painters or sculptors maybe, in their studios. I wander around. Look at the things they're doing. Well, there's got to be a nail sticking out of the wall somewhere and wet canvases lying all over the place, you know?" He shrugs. "I'm always walking into things. All my suits have big gashes in the sleeves."

"It's like a great, old tintype photograph I once saw. I guess it was taken at an artists' colony. You know, the formal group portrait. Everybody very stiff, with their chins sticking out." He puffs up his chest. "They all look so dignified, and then you look up close and this one guy has a rip in his lapel. It's like a big flaw that changes everything."

"So you know, I've been trying to decide what to do. I mean I don't want to go around in a blue serge suit with a torn pants-leg or something, so I asked this guy, Horst, who is a designer, 'Would you make me a suit out of brown paper?' He was funny about it. I don't know. He didn't like the idea of making it out of brown paper. So he kept suggesting other things, like silver paper with sequined stripes. But 1 sort of feel like a paper bag. Something that might end up in the garbage tomorrow. I mean sometimes it's like a neon sign keeps flashing at me and it's saying, 'JAMES ROSENQUIST, IT'S ALL OVER!' I mean you're through! Dead. Finished. But anyway, so that's the kind of paper I wanted. Finally I told Horst to think about it this way. No one would be noticing the material because it would just be plain brown paper, like a garbage bag or something, so his tailoring will be bound to stand out better. It would be like having pure tailoring without a suit. You always have to give people some other reason for doing things."

Poor Horst! If he really agreed to make the suit in brown paper because he thought the material would be inconspicuous, he couldn't have been more deceived. In fact, the only comment about the paper suit that avoids the obvious is probably something like, "Well, Mr. Rosenquist, I certainly admire the cut of your suit! " But the material seems to be such a surprise to everyone who sees it that I can't imagine such a remark being made. People's curiosity about it seems insatiable. There is so much they want to know. "How much did it cost?" "Why doesn't it tear?" "What happens if you get caught in the rain?" "How many times have you worn it?" "Isn't it going to be hard for you to throw it away?" "Where can I get one of my own?" Some are more inclined to make witticisms like "Have you a scrap of paper on you?" or "Do you send it to the eraser's once a week?" But everyone notices the material.

Rosenquist has only worn the suit three times and it is not unscathed. There are no gashes or holes in it, but it has begun to pucker a bit at the knees and elbows and seems in danger of losing its shape. He also admitted that the seat of the pants was growing dangerously thin, but none of this seemed to bother him. In fact, be is even considering whether to get Horst to make him a paper tuxedo for formal occasions. Later Jasper Johns, a fellow pop artist who went to Japan with Rosenquist, reported that Rosenquist was somewhat embarrassed there when he was caught out in a rain that was laden with industrial poisons which caused a suit to disintegrate on him.

Rosenquist glances at his watch and says he has to go. He pushes his chair back from the table, crumples his napkin into a ball and seems about to put it on the empty plate in front of him. But he stops with his arm poised grotesquely in mid-air. He looks like a wind-up doll that has just run down. He slowly relaxes his fist and looks intently at the wadded napkin, then down at his own chest and back at the napkin again. The corners of his mouth curl quizzically in a sort of smile. He appears at once melodramatic and ingenuous. "Wow," he says.

New York/The World Journal Tribune Magazine, November 6. 1966:7-9