“I’m interested in contemporary vision—the flicker of chrome, reflections, rapid associations, quick flashes of light. Bing—bang! I don’t do anecdotes. I accumulate experiences.” Rosenquist in the studio, 1988. Photo: Russ Blaise, courtesy of James Rosenquist. < JAMES ROSENQUIST > Over the past four decades, James Rosenquist’s to influence the scale, content, and style of his work has reflected the world in which we works. Many are monumental in scale, contain live. Through his unique brand of imagery elements of imagery derived from advertising, Rosenquist has addressed modern issues and and employ commercial painting techniques. current events, registered antiwar statements, In 1955 Rosenquist moved to New York, having and voiced concern over the social, political, received a one-year scholarship to study at the economic, and environmental fate of the Art Students League. To support himself, he planet. For much of his career, Rosenquist returned to life as a commercial artist, painting has also expressed in his work a fascination and billboards in Times Square and across the city. curiosity about the cosmos, technology, and scientific theory. By 1960, Rosenquist had stopped painting commercial advertisements and rented a small Born in 1933 in Grand Forks, North Dakota, studio space in lower Manhattan. Working Rosenquist spent his childhood pursuing three against the prevailing tide of Abstract main interests: airplanes, cars, and drawing. Expressionism, Rosenquist soon developed his He liked to draw on rolls of cheap wallpaper, own brand of “new realism”—a style that would producing long, continuous illustrated stories. come to be known as Pop Art. Along with He also built model airplanes, inventing his contemporaries Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, own designs. Rosenquist’s family eventually Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol, settled in Minneapolis. As a teenager he took Rosenquist drew on the iconography of art classes at the Minneapolis Institute of Art advertising and mass media to conjure a sense and later studied painting at the University of contemporary life. In 1962, he had his first of Minnesota. During the summers, he worked solo exhibition at Green Gallery in New York as a billboard painter1— learning a good deal and afterward was included in virtually all the about figurative and commercial painting groundbreaking group exhibitions that techniques from fellow workers. His early established Pop Art as a movement. training as a billboard painter has continued Rosenquist’s approach to painting came out Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer, whose of a collage mentality that pieced together editing style used jump cuts and inserted fragments of imagery gathered from unrelated images in place of seamless advertising images. As Rosenquist scholar transitions. Like Rosenquist’s work, the storyline Julia Blaut notes, “Collage for Rosenquist, as it of New Wave films are often left unresolved. had been since the Cubists first experimented with the medium around 1912, was a metaphor Rosenquist’s work demonstrates an enduring for modern and specifically urban life.” interest in and mastery of texture, color, line, Rosenquist chose to use fractured imagery and shape that continues to dazzle audiences and discontinuous narrative to express his view and influence new generations of artists. His of the modern metropolis. paintings allude to the cultural and political tenor of the times in which they were created. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the focus on They convey impressions and opinions about collage was not limited to the visual arts, but advertising, politics, beauty, space, and time. rather linked to many areas of contemporary Fraught with feeling, they have been called city life. In urban planning, Jane Jacobs’s “visual poems” that resolutely resist words. The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) advocated “urban montage,” an inclusive Now, more than 40 years since his career approach that focused on street life. The began, Rosenquist continues to work on major essence of collage, in the form of found sounds commissions from his current home and studio and the splicing together of otherwise overlooking the Bay of Mexico in Aripeka, independent theatrical elements, was evident in Florida, where he has lived since 1976. Large- the music of John Cage and the choreography scale works, often with personal and political of Merce Cunningham. In literature, themes, still are important to him. Using discontinuous narrative and collage were historical events, personal memories, and characteristic of the writing of the Beats science-based allusions, he creates enigmatic including writers Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, narratives and symbols that comment on the and William Burroughs. Burroughs failures and foibles of humankind. He achieves experimented with montage, including cut film these narratives by fragmenting and combining and photographs, magazine illustrations, and imagery in unexpected ways. His most recent newspaper clippings. Burroughs’s cut-ups works have incorporated high-tech and cosmic involved cutting up his own writing as well as allusions, with themes of time, ecological the work of other authors and randomly concerns, anti-violence, and death. splicing them together to create a new text. This approach recalls Surrealist philosophy, Adapted from an essay by Sarah Bancroft, which sought unexpected poetic combinations exhibition curator. of objects and to infuse an element of chance _______ into the art making process. Rosenquist has 1. Note: In recent years the development of new printing technologies often referred to the work of the French New has changed the way billboard images are produced. Most of today’s billboards are no longer painted, but printed off-site and adhered to Wave filmmakers, including Francois Truffaut, the billboard ready-made. “ If I use a lamp or a chair, that isn’t the subject… If I have three things, their relationship will be the subject matter… One thing, though, the subject matter isn’t popular images.” I Love You with My Ford, 1961. Oil on canvas, 6 feet 10 3/4 inches x 7 feet 9 1/2 inches. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. < SELECTING IMAGES > From images of uniquely American things—hot of personal meaning and connotation. We dogs, angel food cake, cars, tire treads— bring our personal associations to his work and Rosenquist has developed a visual language create our own unique readings and meanings. that is perfectly suited to telling tales about The difficult part is learning to accept his contemporary life. His subject matter is taken astonishing flow of images on purely sensual, from diverse sources and includes consumer formal terms. products, scientific instruments, and electronic communication devices. He has used computer Rosenquist is not interested in whole objects, keyboards and coaxial cables, typography and but in the fragments that we see all the time. diagrams. And there are fragments of people, “Take a walk through midtown Manhattan and both famous and anonymous. you will see the back of a girl’s legs and then you see out of the corner of your eye a taxi Though at first glance the objects that comes close to hitting you. So—the legs, the Rosenquist includes in his paintings may seem car—you see parts of things and you rationalize random, they are carefully chosen for attributes and identify danger by bits and pieces. It’s very quick. It’s about contemporary life.” Welcome to the Water Planet, 1987. Oil on canvas, 13 x 10 feet. Private collection, on display in The Lenox Building, Atlanta. VIEW + DISCUSS Show I Love You with My Ford, 1961 FURTHER EXPLORATIONSEXPLORATIONS L • In Rosenquist’s work we see fragments or parts, never the entire object. This early Rosenquist painting layers A viewfinder is a simple device that can allow us to see common three of his signature images. Fold a objects in alternative ways. To make a viewfinder cut a 1 x 1.5 inch piece of paper in thirds horizontally to rectangle from an index card or use an empty 35-mm slide mount. create three sections. In each section, Place a commonplace object on a table. You may want to use an write down all the associations you object similar to one found in Rosenquist’s work, or choose something have with each of the corresponding entirely different. Look at the object through the viewfinder. Notice individual objects pictured. Are there how the object can be cropped into a fragment by moving the viewfinder closer or further away from your eye. Frame various relationships that seem to emerge? portions of the object from different points of view. Scan the object Write a paragraph describing your for a particularly interesting compositional or psychologically interpretation of this painting. meaningful segment. Draw the image that you see in the viewfinder on a proportionally larger sheet of drawing paper (e.g., 8 x 12 inches). L In this painting Rosenquist uses a technique known as grisaille that uses • Use the viewfinder in a camera in a similar way. Using a film or digital only gray tints to render images. camera, create a series of ten or more photographs that examine a How has Rosenquist used color and single object from various points of view, including close-ups, aerial views (from above) and worm’s-eye-views (from below). Like grisaille within this work? How would Rosenquist, look for an interesting section or fragment of the object. the impact of this painting change if Review the photographs that you have made. In which photograph is all the images were in color? If all the object most recognizable? Why? Which photograph is the most were grisaille? mysterious and transformed? Why? L Does the title I Love You with My • From images gathered from the Internet, magazines, or newspapers, Ford help or hinder your create a layered collage, similar in structure to I Love You with My understanding of the image? Ford.