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James Rosenquist: A Retrospective
Current Events and Social Issues
F-111, 1964–65 (detail).
“The building of war planes provided income for countless American families, but I couldn’t understand why the government wasn’t building hospitals and schools instead of warplanes that would immediately become obsolete.”
–James Rosenquist
Rosenquist grew up part of a generation that reached adulthood in the years following World War II and watched the changing American landscape as it was reflected in the pages of Life and Look magazines. Images from these pages would later become source material for his paintings.
Americans during the 1950s were optimistic about the future. As the decade progressed, Americans prospered, buying cars, moving to the suburbs, and enjoying many of the latest technological advances. But despite the success of many white, middle-class Americans, the 1950s was also a decade marked by military buildup and social and racial inequality.
Within a short span of ten years, the civil rights, antiwar, and women’s movements, and the space race, cold war, and nuclear proliferation would have profound effects on the country. For Rosenquist, current events, cultural patterns, and what he likes to call “the temper of the times” would become essential themes in and continuing influences on his art.
F-111 is the most famous of Rosenquist’s antiwar paintings. At 86 feet long and surrounding the viewer on four walls, it shows, among other things, an F-111 fighter plane, a nuclear bomb detonating, and a little girl sitting under a hair dryer. The work addressed the detachment of a consumer society fueled by the military industrial complex during the cold war and alluded to the escalating conflict in Vietnam.
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James Rosenquist (b. 1933) |
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| Art Explorations | |
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Rosenquist took eight months to complete this monumental painting. When displayed in 1965, it was applauded by many as world’s largest Pop painting, but some critics used words like “pretentious,” “juvenile,” “stale,” and “flat” in their reviews. Write your own critical review of this work. You may want to consult the arts section of your local newspaper to get a feeling for how various critics discuss works of art. |
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Rosenquist expresses his views both through his art and through his actions. In 1972 he was arrested and jailed while protesting the war in Vietnam. He has also traveled around the country campaigning for artists’ rights. Brainstorm a list of current political or social issues. Discuss issues that affect society such as poverty, pollution, ecological stability, or international relationships. Ask students, “How can you respond artistically to the issue you feel strongly about?” Then ask them to devise two responses to the issue they have chosen. One response should be artistic, a poem, drawing, musical composition, or any creative medium they choose. The other response should be community-based, such as working in a political campaign, a homeless shelter, or organizing a neighborhood clean-up. When both projects are completed, students should present them to the class. |
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A time capsule is a collection of objects and information about a particular place and time that is stored away to be discovered at some later time. Just as F-111 is filled with images from the 1960s, create a list of 20 contemporary images and objects that you feel are characteristic of life today. Then share your list with your classmates. Debate and decide which objects should be selected to tell future generations about life today. |
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Rosenquist found many of the images he transformed in his paintings in Life magazine, a popular weekly publication that covered news events as well as the arts, entertainment, and fashion, primarily through photographs. You may be able to find copies at your local library or used bookstore. Looking through them will help to place some of Rosenquist’s imagery in context. Be sure to look at the advertisements as well as the articles, since it is in the ads that Rosenquist found much of his source materials. Discuss how Life magazine is different from magazines today. |
Additional Resources |
Anderson, Terry H. The Movement and the Sixties. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 1995. Bower, Bert (exec. director). History Alive! Twentieth Century United States History Activity Sampler. Teachers Curriculum Institute, 1999. Caney, Steven. Make Your Own Time Capsule. New York: Workman Publishing, 1991. Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, Inc., 1961. Stolley, Richard B. LIFE: Our Century in Pictures, for
Young People, New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2000. |
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. |