James Rosenquist: His American Life

Lipsticks, vehicles, dishwashers, males in enterprise fits, spaghetti, rockets, airplanes, hairdryers, ice cream cones and pigtailed women: James Rosenquist (1933-2017) has all the time identified how one can mix these seemingly disparate however all the time all-American components into whirlwind, billboard-sized collages. With airbrushed surreal euphoria, he slammed colours, patterns, and objects into each other with the attention of an promoting man and the guts of a Pop artist. This momentous catalogue, printed to accompany the primary in-depth survey of the artist’s work of the Sixties by Eighties, will give long-overdue consideration to Rosenquist’s singular achievement in American artwork throughout these three many years.

From 1957 to 1960, Rosenquist earned his dwelling a billboard painter. This was excellent coaching, because it turned out, for an artist about to blow up onto the pop artwork scene. Like different pop artists, Rosenquist tailored the visible language of promoting and popular culture (usually humorous, vulgar, and outrageous) to the context of wonderful artwork. An informative essay by artwork historian Judith Goldman examines the affect of Rosenquist’s early days as a billboard painter, his early themes and strategies, and his similarities and variations with different pop artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein. The essay focuses on areas which have solely been superficially addressed within the literature thus far, bringing the extent of Rosenquist scholarship as much as that of his Pop Artwork contemporaries.

For any collector of American artwork, this offers consideration to Rosenquist’s singular achievement in American artwork throughout these three many years.