Noel Rockmore (American, 1928 to 1995)
Born into a family of New York City artist/intellectuals, Noel Rockmore’s creative talents first emerged musically when he began playing the violin as a young child. His musical studies were cut short due to his lengthy convalescence from polio. Following in the direction of his talented parents, Gladys Rockmore Davis and Floyd Davis, Rockmore started to paint. Restless by nature, Rockmore studied only briefly at the Art Students League and opened his first studio in the Cooper Union Complex in 1947 at the age of nineteen.
The 1950s were a significant time for the development and critical recognition of Rockmore’s work as a painter. During this decade Rockmore paintings were included in group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Whitney Museum of Art, as well as in three well-received one-man shows at the Salpeter Gallery in New York City. He also earned numerous exhibition prizes and prestigious fellowships.
Painted in the summer of 1958, “Coney Island Labyrinth” was created when Rockmore was at the pinnacle of his career in New York City and just prior to his relocation to New Orleans. The painting was well received, earning the National Academy of Design’s Julius Hallgarten Prize at their 134th Annual Exhibition, which was essential in Rockmore earning the Tiffany Fellowship.
Fascinated by the excitement and activities of the legendary amusement park, Rockmore rented studio space next to Coney Island, in a building that stored the sideshow props. The multi-layered and meticulously detailed painting “Coney Island Labyrinth” depicts a daytime view of the balcony of his second floor studio, with a self-portrait of the artist with violin in hand, a painting in progress on the easel, a cat sleeping on the ledge, and an assortment of damaged and used sideshow props beside him. In the background are the backyards of the surrounding group of eclectic neighbors, batting range, beach and the rides of Coney Island.
The New York based artist Xavier Gonzales suggested to Noel Rockmore that he visit New Orleans and arranged a studio for him at the home of fellow artist Paul Ninas in 1959. Gonzales encouraged the young artist to explore new avenues and directions and to avoid the pressures and self-consciousness of the New York City art world. For the next thirty years Noel Rockmore was a fixture in the bohemian artistic and writing community that congregated in the French Quarter.
Reference: Feigenbaum, Gail, “Rockmore Fantasies & Realities,” New Orleans Museum of Art, 1998; and “Noel Rockmore Biography by E. Larry Borenstein, 1973,” part 1 and 2, The Noel Rockmore Project, 2009.
Information courtesy of Neal Auction Company, April 2009.