James Rosenquist

Cologne, Kunsthalle Cologne, James Rosenquist: Gemäde-Räume-Graphik, Eine Ausstellung des Wallraf-Richartz-Museums, January - March 1972, cat. no. 39
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, James Rosenquist, April – September 1972, p. 43, illustrated
Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Aspekte der 60er Jahre aus der Sammlung Reinhard Onnasch, February - April 1978, p. 77, illustrated
Cologne, Museum Ludwig, Europa/Amerika, September - November 1986, cat. no. 144, p. 319, illustrated in color
Valencia, IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez, James Rosenquist, May - August 1991, p. 100, illustrated in color
Lisbon, Centro Cultural de Bélem, The Pop 60s: Transatlantic Crossing, September  - November 1997, cat. no. 14, p. 62, illustrated in color
Barcelona, Museu d’Art Contemporani; Serralves, Museu Serralves, Museu d’Arte Contemporanea, The Onnasch Collection: Aspects of Contemporary Art, November 2001 – February 2002, p. 107, illustrated in color

Judith Goldman, James Rosenquist, New York, 1985, p. 85, illustrated in color
Bernhard Kerber, Bestände Onnasch, Berlin and Bremen, 1992, p. 64, illustrated in color
Judith Goldman, James Rosenquist: The Early Pictures, New York, 1992, p. 86, illustrated
Exh. Cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, James Rosenquist: A Retrospective, New York, 2003, p. 32, illustrated in color

“I’m amazed and excited and fascinated about the way things are thrust at us, the way this invisible screen that’s a couple of feet in front of our mind and our senses is attacked by radio and television and visual communications, through things larger than life, the impact of things thrown at us, at such a speed and with such a force that painting and the attitudes toward painting and communication through doing a painting now seem very old-fashioned....” (James Rosenquist in “ ‘What is Pop Art?’ Interviews with eight painters”, ArtNews, February 1964).  In the early 1960's Rosenquist began to deal with how the media was affecting the public, and how this would effect how one would look at a painting.   Whether it was a blown up image from a billboard, or a shrunken image on a small television set, everyday objects, including the human figure, became a never-ending supply of imagery for Rosenquist’s brightly colored paintings such as Brighter than the Sun.  

Years of painting advertising on larger-than-life billboard signs between 1954 and 1960 gave Rosenquist a full and visually rich vocabulary from which he was able to draw upon in his own art.  In addition, other artists working around him, such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol were pulling ready-made images from the media and inserting them in their art.   Although always labeled a Pop artist like his contemporaries, Rosenquist resented the label.  He wasn’t trying to be satiristic or ironic about society, like other Pop artists.  Nor was he trying to be witty or trying to judge current culture.  Although some of his paintings may appear to be a pun, they were certainly not intended as such.   Rosenquist’s work is also much more painterly and fluid than the highly graphic nature of the pop art of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol.  

Andy Warhol, commonly used commercial advertising images from newspapers and magazines in his work from the early 1960’s.  Rosenquist, however, had a wholly unique method of infusing the everyday into his art.  As he said, “Painting is probably more exciting than advertising – so why shouldn’t it be done with that power and gusto, with that impact.” (ibid, p. 111).  By juxtaposing incomplete and seemingly obscure images next to each other, the large paintings become exciting and somewhat abstracted.  Marcia Tucker explains, “The experience of painting huge images at close range also provided the initial impetus toward dealing with issues of size, scale, distance, selectivity, abstraction, and directional and perceptual shifts in his own work” (Whitney Museum of American Art, James Rosenquist, New York, 1972, p. 11).   In the present work, the legs in seamed stockings, which are taken from an advertising campaign for Cameo stockings, are enlarged, fragmented and turned on their side, then set against the background of a sunset.  The size of the legs alters the image the scale of the sky, and vice versa.  Depending on which part of the painting one is looking at, the dimensions and distance of the object viewed constantly shift.    By placing the subject matter where they have no function, in their ‘real’ life as advertising or useful objects, they become abstracted. 

What is important to Rosenquist is not the subject matter that he chooses to paint, but the relationships between the subjects and the feelings evoked in the viewer.  Rosenquist notes that, “If I use a lamp or a chair, that isn’t the subject, it isn’t the subject matter.  The relationships may be the subject matter, the relationships of the fragments I do.  The content will be something more, gained from the relationships.  If I have three things, their relationship will be the subject matter; but the content will, hopefully, be fatter, balloon to more than the subject matter” (ibid. p. 112).   Nostalgia was not what Rosenquist was looking for – instead he wanted the commonness of the everyday to inspire.   In a painting where everyday objects are placed where they have no function at all, the viewer can instead contemplate his or her personal experience with the perceived object and its relationship to the other objects in the painting.  In essence, personal experience is needed to ‘complete’ the visual experience with a Rosenquist painting.    The idea that when something is so commonplace it actually becomes abstract is something that fascinated Rosenquist.  By taking the subject matter out of context, the viewer must perceive it abstractly, without any pre-conceived notions. If the viewer is told what they are looking at, the sensual legs in Brighter than the Sun are immediately recognizable.  If, however, one doesn’t know that, then the inset black and white image seems an abstraction set against a fiery sunset.   Rosenquist is using the sexual symbolism of the advertisement, but he is submerging it in the benign imagery of a landscape.  Rosenquist says, “My metaphor, if that is what you can call it, is my relations to the power of commercial advertising which is in turn related to our free society, the visual inflation which accompanies the money that produces box tops and space cadets...” (James Rosenquist in “ ‘What is Pop Art?’ Interviews with eight painters”, ArtNews, February 1964, p. 111).  The power of suggestion is something that Rosenquist became a master of.  Without knowing it, the viewer is forced to confront, in very large, bright and real terms, the in-your-face advertising of our consumer obsessed society.   In this respect, and because of this sentiment, Rosenquist seeks to present the dichotomy between nature and society – and how far apart they have become.   He said in 1964, “I try to get as far away from the nature as possible....” (ibid, p. 112).   This distance that the artist is trying to achieve is beautifully exhibited by the relationship of the various subject matter in Brighter than the Sun. 

Far from nature, yet borne from it....  From the culture of society, but not of it, nor judgemental of it....-   Brigher than the Sun is a painting which weaves together the threads of 1960’s commercial imagery into a unique fabric of visually stimulating accord.  It is full of relational imagery which continues to inspire and intrigue us even today.