James Romberger Interview Article

James Rombergerʼs drawings are in the collections of the Metropolitan, Brooklyn, Newark, Delaware, Philadelphia, and Parrish Museums, Harvard, and the Library of Congress. His art has been exhibited at Grace Borgenicht, PPOW, Gracie Mansion and many other galleries in New York, most recently at James Fuentes and the Seoul Museum of Art. Romberger has been published by Marvel, DC/Vertigo, Dark Horse, Image and Fantagraphics; his graphic novels include his Eisner-nominated Post York, and the New York Times bestseller ʻ7 Miles a Secondʼ with David Wojnarowicz, that was also on display in the New Museumʼs 1999 Wojnarowicz retrospective, and exhibited in MoMAʼs millenium show “Open Ends”. Other works heʼs drawn include 2020 Visions, Bronx Kill, Aaron and Ahmed, and the Ignatz-nominated The Late Child and Other Animals.
JAMES ROMBERGER

James Romberger
describes himself as a sometimes person; sometimes
fine artist, sometimes cartoonist, sometimes
writer, sometimes teacher. His gallery work is
massive in spectacle and significance. It has the
otherworldly quality of walking through a city teetering
on the cusp of collapse, the smoke from ravenous,
seemingly never ending fires clouding your
eyes. Light rushes through these hard streets like
morphine in a vein.
“The Battle of ABC” (1990)
James has spent his life in or near New York. He
was born in Long Island and then his family moved
upstate to small towns, their nearest neighbors
cows, trees stretching into the skies. After he graduated
from high school, he studied fine art at
Munson Williams Proctor Institute in Utica, then
came to NYC to study animation at the School of
Visual Arts. Years later he would also attend
Columbia, but back in 1982 he finally ended up in
the East Village, which was exactly the right place
to be at that moment. This was where everything
began; he spent the subsequent years drawing
what he witnessed; the inspiration of picturesque
rubble was everywhere, crushed buildings punctuated
by graffiti.
“Tent City Burning” (1989)

Romberger’s covers
These neglected landscapes drew him in: pushers lurk around a bodega that seethes with an awful light;
people dazed on 1st Avenue, high on pills and sex and words; starving dogs gnaw on garbage spilling from
an overturned trash can. When gentrification hit in the early nineties, the stream of inspiration went with it. Gone
were the funky, scratchy streets, replaced with shatterproof glass and high fashion boutiques. But James
doesn’t want to be sentimental about the things he saw that don’t exist anymore, because New York City is by
nature always in flux.
His influences include the masters: Degas, Brueghel, the impressionists. His work is tinged by the religious art
of the Renaissance, and the shadows of his childhood found in comics. Today he is inspired by simply thinking
and looking, by a movie, by a piece of music. James likens art to a saying about the US Army: it’s not just
a job, it’s an adventure. He has to make art. If he doesn’t do it every day, he doesn’t feel complete. This
compulsion comes across in the obsessive details in his art.
In tackling an urban landscape, he makes on-site sketches which are more like notes: for example, for a
building for a nighttime drawing, he might go in the daytime and rough out the scene in the light, which for
him means to count the windows, draw the various types of window lintels and other distinct features of the
brick and mortar of the building, then come back at night to note the location and color of the lights, before
going back to the studio to put everything together. He is at the moment moving from large scale drawing into
smaller scale oil painting.
“The World”, 1989 “4th Street Nocturne, 2002

His new series of NFTs are images of slides of the
elaborate, ornate pastel drawings he did of the East
Village as he knew it in the 1980s.
“It was a full on drug supermarkets.
There were people lined
up on the street, lines of junkies
and dudes with baseball bats. I’d
walk through it. And it was fearsome.
But while the village was
in a horrific state, there was also
a sense of great freedom. The
gay rights movement was picking
up; people felt completely
free to be themselves, as the
artists of the time felt free to do
what they pleased.”
“The Triumph of Death II”, 2022
Was it an elation in apocalypse; a euphoria at the
end of the world? Since the sedating of New York,
I wonder if James is still at all surprised by the city,
still startled at all.
“New York is a live beast; it
shifts.”
Sometimes he finds that he doesn’t recognize it.
The stores have morphed. The streets are different.
But this doesn’t make him sad, it’s a cycle. New
York tries on many dresses. Buildings come down,
buildings go up. New York changes and that’s what
it’s meant to do.
“Jesus’ Heart”, 2022

On that topic, I wonder if James, who was in the thick of the
artistic revolution of the East Village, thinks there might be
another movement like that.
“I think New York goes through waves
of scenes, he says. Every new group of
young artists makes their own scene.
The East Village wasn’t the first scene
and it won’t be the last.”
James Romberger
“In the fifties, a cluster of galleries along
Ninth Street gave birth to the Abstract
Expressionists. Then in the sixties, Soho
spawned Pop and Minimalism. In the
80s, we had our East Village movement.”
“And now, young people are making art and feeling the magic. I feel a
continuity and connection with these young artists.”
James Romberger’s drawings are in the collections of the Metropolitan, Brooklyn, Newark, Delaware, Philadelphia, and
Parrish Museums, Harvard, and the Library of Congress. His art has been exhibited at Grace Borgenicht, PPOW,
Gracie Mansion and many other galleries in New York, most recently at James Fuentes and the Seoul Museum of Art.
Romberger has been published by Marvel, DC/Vertigo, Dark Horse, Image and Fantagraphics; his graphic novels
include his Eisner-nominated Post York, and the New York Times bestseller ‘7 Miles a Second’ with David Wojnarowicz,
that was also on display in the New Museum’s 1999 Wojnarowicz retrospective, and exhibited in MoMA’s millenium
show “Open Ends”. Other works he’s drawn include 2020 Visions, Bronx Kill, Aaron and Ahmed, and the
Ignatz-nominated The Late Child and Other Animals.
In the 1980s East Village art scene, Romberger was co-director of the noted installation gallery Ground Zero and
curated numerous exhibitions in New York and Europe. In the 2000s while studying at Columbia, Romberger art-directed
the Howl! Festival for six years, in the latter part producing the Carl Solomon Book Fair and Arteries, public
sculptures in Tompkins Square Park. He’s taught Visual Narrative and Observational Drawing at Parsons, Hunter
College, and Marywood University. He has written on comics, film, and media for Publishers Weekly, Aperture, The
Comics Journal, The Beat, and LAAB. Romberger co-stars (as himself) in Make Me Famous (2021), an acclaimed
feature documentary film about the mysterious death of Edward Brezinski, one of Ground Zero’s artists, currently
showing at film festivals around the world.
jamesromberger.com
Article by Jasmine Ledesma
Layout by Janice Zhai

“Slide 1” (2023)