JAMES ROSENQUIST | Dance of the Electrical Nymphs

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1988

New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Group Exhibition, January 1988

Craig Adcock, James Rosenquist's Commissioned Works, Stockholm 1990, pp. 56-57, illustrated

This work is in very good condition overall. Right Canvas: There is light evidence of handling and wear to the edges including minor hairline craquelure at the pull margins. There is a very minor line scratch 6 in. from the top and 12. in. from the left edge. There is a minor dent at the lower left edge, approximately 19 in. from the bottom. There is also a small black accretion in the lower left corner approximately 4 in. from the bottom. There are three small surface inconsistencies, possibly impasto loss along the bottom edge. Under extreme raking light, very minor and unobtrusive small spot accretions are visible scattered throughout, especially in the lower third of the work. Under Ultraviolet inspection, the aforementioned losses and spot accretions fluoresce brightly but are not the result of restoration. Framed. Left Canvas: There is light evidence of handling and wear to the edges including minor hairline craquelure at the pull margins. 21 in. from the bottom and 5 in. from the right edge there are two unobtrusive vertical diagonal scratches. Under extreme raking light, three hairline cracks are present in a localized area approximately 23 in. from the top and 20 in. from the right edge. One is vertical and runs 3 in. in length. Two are horizontal and run parallel to each other are are approximately 3 and 1 1/2 in. in length. Under Ultraviolet inspection, the aforementioned scratches fluoresce brightly but are not the result of restoration. Framed.
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Rosenquist became one of the forefront icons of the Pop Art movement through his brilliant use of mainstream imagery combined with his deft painting skills. Having honed his craft as a billboard painter in the Midwest and New York during the 1950s Rosenquist’s canvases demonstrate his superb illustration skills in a large scale format to convey his artistic message. His canvases are a synthesis of the process he learned in his early painting career and visually complex narratives. The present work highlights Rosenquist’s profound admiration and respect of nature and his cautious fascination with science and technology. Dance of the Electrical Nymphs, painted in 1987, is a prime example of Rosenquist’s late career themes and styles, utilizing fragmented mass media and advertising imagery to initially introduce a familiar sense of modern life but thoroughly subverting that feeling with his own artistic message. The backdrop and base imagery for Untitled is of floral life forced up close upon the viewer with large swaths of green, blues, and pinks decorating the canvas in an almost patterned way. The intensely vivid style of the flowers in their intimate closeness renders them immediately sensuous and seductive as Rosenquist’s muse and symbol of his love of nature. The idyllic imagery though is introduced with visual intrigue with the curvilinear gashes sliced across the base image. Inside these cuts are close ups of female faces, a jarring intervention into the harmonious imagery of flora. These faces, forced even more up against the picture plane and the base plant imagery, focus on the lips and eyes and show the mechanical sources of the imagery as they are seemingly lifted straight from magazine and billboard advertisements. These consumerist images, in jolting juxtaposition with the plant life, show Rosenquist’s distillation of imagery and his ability to reveal the mechanics of desire and underlying commercialization that has had a negative impact on our planet.

As Sarah Bancroft writes, “Rosenquist began on ongoing series inspired by flora around his Florida studio, painting the flowers of this tropical climate in all their bravura and delicacy, lush depictions of plant life are interspersed with the faces of women. The precise markings of this human interference allude to the mechanical and technological progress that, like the images, is often at odds with nature. The artists describes these lusciously painted floral and aquatic works as ‘ecological and political paintings’ that address the fragility of life on earth”(Sarah Bancroft, Exh. Cat. Guggenheim Bilbao, James Rosenquist: A Retrospective, 2004).  

There is peculiar violence of the cutting motion that charges all across the canvas, slicing nature with the stark human facial features collaged in the cuts. Rosenquist’s violence stems from the suddenness of the collage. Rosenquist has noted “The essence of collage is to take very disparate imagery and put it together and the result becomes an idea, not so much a picture. It’s like listening to the radio and getting your own idea from all these images that are often antidotes – acid – to each other. They make sparks or they don’t. The best this is that they make sparks” (James Rosenquist, quoted in J. Blaut, “James Rosenquist: Collage and the Painting of Modern Life,” in W. Hopps & S. Bancroft, James Rosenquist: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, 2003, p. 17). By forcing the interaction of the plant and human imagery Rosenquist calls attention to the interaction, contrast, and specificity of each image through his brushwork and arrangement. In Dance of the Electrical Nymphs he synthesizes the imagery into poetry on the canvas that rings home his passion and dedication to his planet and the entirety of nature, creating those “sparks” that directly impact the viewer.



This work is documented in the James Rosenquist archives under number 87.18.