James Rosenquist

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York (LC#146)
Texas Gallery, Houston

New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, James Rosenquist Paintings 1977, September - October 1977, n.p., illustrated in color

The present work by James Rosenquist, Wildcatters Child, borrows its name from the maverick "wildcatters" who cultivated the virgin oil fields of Texas in pursuit of the American Dream. In the late 70s and early 80s, Rosenquist used a visual dialogue to examine the effects of living in late 20th Century industrialized America.  As a result, important icons for Rosenquist from 1977-1982 are gears and molten metal.  This imagrey refers back to Rosenquists earlier works from the 1960s that included images of mechanical parts in juxtaposition to fragments of faces, legs and hands. The tension between the mechanical and the natural was a common theme for Rosenquist who felt that the industrial interfered with the natural and the sensuous. Comparable A, is a wonderful drawing of the present painting, titled Wildcatter's Child, (oil, steel, rails, nuclear).  This drawing was exhibited at the artist's retrospective organized by the Guggenheim Museum in 2003.