James Rosenquist

Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist)

Leo Castelli Gallery, James Rosenquist: 4E77st Revisited and New Paper Constructions from Gemini G.E.L, with statements by James Rosenquist, New York 1996, illustrated p. 37

Executed in 1999, James Rosenquist’s The Color of Intellect visualizes the whirlwind of our hyper-capitalist world and pushes the material boundaries of paper itself.

"What does one do with beautiful French Arches paper that hasn't been done? Artists have drawn on it, painted on it, folded it, sandpapered it, ripped it, burned it, chewed it, and maybe eaten it, and still it remains archivally beautiful and long lasting. What next? I think we'll cut it in fine strips, dye it, draw and arrange it on a press, glue it and press it into a new form of paper composition to hold an image. At Gemini G.E.L. on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles in 1995, with the help of Jim Reed, I composed these individual images on a large press from a variety of colors and paper strip sizes. I photographed multiple constructions of eye glass frames representing intellect or lack of, and then Gemini printed this composition on the new paper ground with a new technique." [1]

From the beginning of his career, Rosenquist, like other Pop artists, incorporated the visual imagery of advertising and popular culture into his work. Even in the early ‘60s, when he was just starting out, Rosenquist’s work was defined by the use of collage. In his paintings from this period, disparate visual fragments are enlarged, rotated and otherwise manipulated to create dynamic compositions that mirror urban modern life, as Rosenquist explains:

“In collage there is a glint… of modern life. For example, if you take a walk through midtown Manhattan and you see the back of a girl’s legs and then you see out of the corner of your eye a taxi comes close to hitting you.”[2]

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Rosenquist was collaging static images to create this experience of contemporary life, but as his career progressed, individual images began to acquire their own velocity. In many of the paintings from the ‘80s, the images whoosh past our eyes and often look like they have gone through a shredder. In The Color of Intellect, Rosenquist takes the process of collage to its conclusion to convey the unfathomable speed of contemporary life. In this work, instead of collaging images, he collages strips of paper — shards of images ­­— which suggest the absolute fragmentation of contemporary experience. The ‘images’ are no longer recognizable in any way; they have instead been obliterated by their own frenzied motion.

[1] James Rosenquist: 4E77st Revisited and New Paper Constructions from Gemini G.E.L, with statements by James Rosenquist, New York: Leo Castelli Gallery, p. 17.

[2] James Rosenquist, quoted in Julia Blaut, “James Rosenquist: Collage and the Painting of Modern Life,” in James Rosenquist: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2003, 17.