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SUBJECT AREA LEGEND    
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LESSONS BASED ON "James Rosenquist: |
James Rosenquist: A Retrospective
Selecting Images
“ If I use a lamp or a chair, that isn’t the subject… If I have three things, their relationship will be the subject matter… One thing, though, the subject matter isn’t popular images.”
–James Rosenquist
From images of uniquely American things—hot dogs, angel food cake, cars, tire treads— Rosenquist has developed a visual language that is perfectly suited to telling tales about contemporary life. His subject matter is taken from diverse sources and includes consumer products, scientific instruments, and electronic communication devices. He has used computer keyboards and coaxial cables, typography and diagrams. And there are fragments of people, both famous and anonymous.
Though at first glance the objects that Rosenquist includes in his paintings may seem random, they are carefully chosen for attributes of personal meaning and connotation. We bring our personal associations to his work and create our own unique readings and meanings. The difficult part is learning to accept his astonishing flow of images on purely sensual, formal terms.
Rosenquist is not interested in whole objects, but in the fragments that we see all the time. “Take a walk through midtown Manhattan and you will 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. So—the legs, the car—you see parts of things and you rationalize and identify danger by bits and pieces. It’s very quick. It’s about contemporary life.”
| View + Discuss |
James Rosenquist (b. 1933) |
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James Rosenquist (b. 1933) |
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| Art Explorations | |
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In Rosenquist’s work we see fragments or parts, never the entire object. A viewfinder is a simple device that can allow us to see common objects in alternative ways. To make a viewfinder cut a 1 x 1.5 inch rectangle from an index card or use an empty 35-mm slide mount. Place a commonplace object on a table. You may want to use an object similar to one found in Rosenquist’s work, or choose something entirely different. Look at the object through the viewfinder. Notice how the object can be cropped into a fragment by moving the viewfinder closer or further away from your eye. Frame various portions of the object from different points of view. Scan the object for a particularly interesting compositional or psychologically meaningful segment. Draw the image that you see in the viewfinder on a proportionally larger sheet of drawing paper (e.g., 8 x 12 inches). |
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Use the viewfinder in a camera in a similar way. Using a film or digital camera, create a series of ten or more photographs that examine a single object from various points of view, including close-ups, aerial views (from above) and worm’s-eye-views (from below). Like Rosenquist, look for an interesting section or fragment of the object. Review the photographs that you have made. In which photograph is the object most recognizable? Why? Which photograph is the most mysterious and transformed? Why? |
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From images gathered from the Internet, magazines, or newspapers, create a layered collage, similar in structure to I Love You with My Ford. Begin with an 8 x 8 inch sheet of poster board and experiment with the possibilities of juxtaposing fragments of three images. Consider both aesthetics and meaning, but try to leave some mystery in your choices. When finished, decide on a title for your work. |
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Try the exercise described above again, but this time invent new and unexpected ways to combine your images. You may want to borrow some strategies from Welcome to the Water Planet, including layering, perforating, and dissecting. When you are pleased with your design, use a glue stick to adhere it to the poster board and decide on a title for your work. |
Vocabulary |
ABSTRACT Not related to material objects. ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM A movement in American painting that developed in New York during the 1940s and stressed the spontaneous expression of emotion without reference to any representation of physical reality. BEATS Beginning in the 1950s, artists, poets, and musicians who defied social norms by adopting a bohemian lifestyle and rejecting traditional American values and material possessions. COLLAGE Two-dimensional works made of pasted paper pieces, cloth, or other materials. CUBIST Referring to a style of art originated by George Braque and Pablo Picasso. The Cubists fragmented objects and pictorial space into semitransparent, overlapping faceted planes. GRID A network of evenly spaced horizontal and vertical lines, as found on graph paper. GRISAILLE A style of painting that uses only gray tints to render images. ICONOGRAPHY Symbols and images that have a particular meaning, either learned or universal. The visual imagery used to convey meaning in a work of art. MEDIA MESSAGES Communication that reaches us through information and entertainment technologies that may use a combination of words, images, and sounds to capture our attention. METAPHOR A figure of speech or visual presentation in which a word, phrase, or image is used in place of another to suggest a likeness between them, while in the process formulating a new concept for the imagination. POP ART An art movement with its roots in the 1950s that explored the image world of popular culture, from which its name derives. Basing their techniques, style, and imagery on certain aspects of mass reproduction, the media, and consumer society, these artists took inspiration from advertising, pulp magazines, billboards, movies, television, comic strips, and shop windows. These images, presented with (and sometimes transformed by) humor, wit, and irony, can be seen as both a celebration and a critique of popular culture. POPULAR CULTURE The common set of arts, entertainment, customs, beliefs, and values shared by large segments of society. SCALING-UP A technique traditionally used in commercial art to enlarge an image by using a proportional grid. SURREALISM A 20th-century art movement in art and literature that sought to express what is in the subconscious mind by depicting objects and events as seen in dreams. |