Noel Rockmore, ‘Picasso of New Orleans,’ revisited

“Noel was an autodidact of the highest order,” Antippas said. “There was probably no artist more prolific than Noel — except perhaps Picasso.”

“He couldn’t relate to the real world. He lived in his own world; he was driven by his own work,” said Rita Posselt, a 59-year-old fine art photographer who lived with Rockmore between 1978 and 1984 and frequently posed for him. “He would wake up in the morning and go to bed at night, and in between those hours there was a lot of torment for him.

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(AP/AP) - Noel Rockmore's 1972 ‘Self Portrait in Paris.’

“He wanted somebody to recognize his talent, and he wanted important people in the art world, museums and such, to do so, but he didn’t want to jump through hoops and parties to make it happen.”

During his life, and still today, Rockmore was a kind of New Orleans project.

He is woven into the city. Anyone who has stepped into the gloom of Preservation Hall has seen Rockmores — they’re the haunting oil paintings of jazz greats on the walls. A Rockmore hangs in Johnny White’s bar. It’s a football scene, a token of appreciation for the bar owner, Johnny White, and typically Rockmore: There are three teams on the field. His paintings hang in the Old Mint, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and on the walls of galleries and homes throughout New Orleans. And who knows where else.

“My feeling was that Noel was the most democratic painter,” Antippas said. “Every waiter, bartender, in the Quarter has a Rockmore. God knows how many Rockmores are hanging on walls throughout the city.”

Rockmore died in 1995 at 66 of an untreated infection. When he was taken to the hospital, according to friends, he was admitted as a “street person.” According to his friends, he sat up on the gurney and declared, “I’m not a street person, I’m a great artist.”

“I always say that he is America’s Picasso,” said Heller-Rhys, his daughter and an accomplished artist, as she stood during a recent visit outside the Skyscraper building, an 18th-century apartment building where Rockmore — and many other artists, including Charles Bukowski — stayed in the 1970s. “And America has to come to terms with that.”

— Associated Press