ART CITIES:London-James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist was one of the seminal figures of the Pop art movement, who took as his inspiration the subject and style of modern commercial culture. Through a complex layering of such motifs as Coca-Cola bottles, kitchen appliances, packaged foods, and women’s lipsticked mouths and manicured hands, Rosenquist’s large canvases and prints embody and comment on the dizzying omnipresence of the consumer world.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Archive
The 1960s was a defining decade for James Rosenquist, his paintings radically tested the possibilities of perception, of the image and of the painted medium itself, propelling him to the centre of art-world attention. At the forefront of his time and the nascent Pop Art Movement, he combined figurative painting techniques, collage and the use of found objects to convey the contradictions inherent to the American experience – juxtaposing John F. Kennedy and the American Dream with images relating to the Vietnam War, mass consumerism, segregation and technological innovation. The exhibition with an in-depth focus on this pivotal decade, “James Rosenquist: Visualising the Sixties” not only illuminates why the early years of the artist’s career were so groundbreaking, but will also demonstrate the innovative and experimental techniques Rosenquist employed throughout the decade, pushing the boundaries of his medium in an era that redefined the field of painting. The exhibition features important paintings on both canvas and plastics from this era that highlight his innovations as one of the earliest pioneers of experiential art, juxtaposed with rarely seen studies for some of his most iconic paintings, which the artist kept private for most of his career. Casting new light on Rosenquist’s practice, influences and motivations – both within and beyond the realms of Pop art – the exhibition includes seminal works loaned from international museums and foundations, alongside those from the artist’s Estate and family. In addition to motorised paintings, works incorporating electric lightbulbs and pieces on diversely shaped canvases, the exhibition presents an interactive hanging piece on strips of Mylar plastic, explicitly designed to be walked through by visitors and never-before exhibited in the UK – described by Rosenquist as “painting as immersion”. Born in Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1933, Rosenquist studied art at the University of Minnesota (1952–54) before enrolling at the Art Students League, New York, also frequenting the Cedar Tavern where he met painters Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Milton Resnick. Working as a painter of monumental advertising billboards and painting abstract canvases in his spare time, in 1960 he abandoned commercial painting and set up a studio in Coenties Slip, New York. Cropping, fragmenting and re-colouring images from magazines, uniquely combined with the skills and gestures of sign-painting, Rosenquist began searching for a new language that would differentiate him from the second generation of Abstract Expressionists and set him apart from his peers. In 1961, vanguard art dealers Leo Castelli, Ivan Karp, Ileana Sonnabend and Richard Bellamy visited Rosenquist’s studio, and his first solo exhibition was held at Bellamy’s Green Gallery, New York, the following year. Pop Art was rapidly gaining momentum and the show sold out in its entirety, with many works going to the leading collectors associated with the movement, including Robert Scull, Richard Brown Baker and Count Panza di Biumo. One of the important early works on display “The Light that Won’t Fail I” (1961), on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., demonstrates Rosenquist’s mastery of collage techniques in painting, layering and transforming his imagery through uncanny, mysterious juxtapositions. The face of a smoking femme fatale, drawn from a Philip Morris advertisement, appears lit by the acid glow of neon lights and overlaid with a pair of sock-clad feet, while an outsized hair comb structures the upper edge of the canvas. The relationships between these disparate elements are elusive – seeming to shift with the viewer’s perspective – and enticing in their ambiguity. The painting was purchased from the Green Gallery by the collector Joseph H. Hirshhorn and has since been exhibited in major retrospectives of the artist’s work. The 60s saw Rosenquist radically experiment with his compositions, embracing vibrant colour palettes, the shaped canvas, and incorporating three-dimensional objects into the picture plane. The innovative use of electrical lightbulbs appeared in works such as “Reification” (1961), “Painting with Bulb” (1962) and “Small Doorstop” (1963-67). In “Reification” a combination of bulbs and empty sockets are set against a fragmented rectangle of pillar-box red, spelling out the first three letters of the painting’s title and suggesting an advertising slogan or shopfront. Softer in palette and surreal in content, “Painting with Bulb” explores Rosenquist’s fascination with the image itself. Attesting to his painterly skill, Rosenquist has subtly superimposed two segments of cloudy sky to create a double framing of the central flashlight fixture. In reference to his related painting “Noon” (1962), Rosenquist explained, “I was fascinated by the fact that light can actually make things disappear, by eclipsing all else”. Employing both metaphor and paradox, Rosenquist’s lightbulb paintings place him alongside contemporaries such as Robert Rauschenberg, who used lightbulbs in a number of his famed “Combines”. One of Rosenquist’s first shaped canvases and among the earliest works on display, “Coenties Slip Studio” (1961) presents an ambiguous, yet personal, portrait of the artist and his studio. With its title referencing the site of its production, whose East River residents also included Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin, the painting is both free from explicit narrative yet suggestive and considered, exemplary of Rosenquist’s ability to create mysterious compositions that challenge viewers and render the familiar uncanny. Unlike his contemporaries, Rosenquist produced numerous works on circular or television-shaped canvases in a variety of sizes throughout the decade. In “Paramus” (1966), drawn from a 1954 illustration of the three coloured beams of an RCA television, circles of magenta and blue echo the orbit of their frame, recalling the swirls of blurred color produced by an out-of-focus lens and the peripheries – or limits – of vision. Exemplifying Rosenquist’s pioneering engagement with newfound technologies and industrial innovations, the exhibition includes a number of works that incorporate Plexiglass, Mylar, acrylics and polythene – plastics that were still in their infancy at the time. Expanding the limits of the painted medium, the lower half of “Morning Sun” (1963) is encased by a sheet of painted plastic, suspended from a fishhook and twine on a bamboo stick that protrudes from the frame’s upper edge, simultaneously obscuring and transforming the subjects painted behind. Exhibited for the first time in the UK, “Forest Ranger” (1967), on loan from Museum Ludwig, Cologne, is an interactive, free-hanging painting on strips of industrial Mylar, measuring over 4 metres in height and explicitly designed to be walked through by visitors. Depicting a World War II armoured vehicle drawn from a General Motors Chevrolet advertisement, “Forest Ranger” calls into question traditional divisions between modes of viewing and environments of display. With images of forest- and carcass-cutting technologies painted upon a sliced ‘canvas’, the work attests to Rosenquist’s trailblazing position in the realms of experiential and immersive art. The exhibition also features “Yellow Applause” (1966), a highly individual motorised painting in which two hands on separate canvases are brought together in a literal clap, enacting the actions suggested by the title. Rosenquist’s inventiveness in display, content and form across these dynamic works set him apart from the Pop artists of the time and exemplify his revolutionary explorations into art as experience.
Info: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac – Ely House, 37 Dover street, London, Duration: 11/9-9/11/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.ropac.net
