James Rosenquist

James Rosenquist
Photo of James Rosenquist in his Aripeka, Florida studio, 1988. Photo by Russ Blaise
Born	November 29, 1933 (1933-11-29) (age 76) Grand Forks, North Dakota
Nationality	American
Field	Painting, Printing, Drawing
Training	Minneapolis College of Art and Design, University of Minnesota, Art Students League of New York
Movement	pop-art

James Rosenquist (born November 29, 1933) is an American artist and one of the protagonists in the pop-art movement.

Background and education

He was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota and grew up as an only child. His parents, amateur pilots, moved from town to town to look for work, finally settling in Minneapolis. His mother, who was also a painter, encouraged her son to have an artistic interest. In junior high school, Rosenquist won a short-term scholarship to study at the Minneapolis School of Art and subsequently studied painting at the University of Minnesota from 1952 to 1954. In 1955, at the age of 21, he moved to New York City on scholarship to study at the Art Students League.^[1]

Career

Early Years and Pop

From 1957 to 1960, he earned his living as a billboard painter. This was perfect training, as it turned out, for an artist about to explode onto the pop art scene. Rosenquist deftly applied sign-painting techniques to the large-scale paintings he began creating in 1960. Like other pop artists, Rosenquist adapted the visual language of advertising and pop culture (often funny, vulgar, and outrageous) to the context of fine art. Rosenquist achieved international acclaim in 1965 with the room-scale painting F-111.

Rosenquist has stated the following about his involvement in the Pop Art movement: "They(art critics) called me a Pop artist because I used recognizable imagery. The critics like to group people together. I didn't meet Andy Warhol until 1964. I did not really know Andy or Roy Lichtenstein that well. We all emerged separately."^[2]

Mature work

His specialty is taking fragmented, oddly disproportionate images and combining, overlapping, and putting them on canvases to create visual stories. This can leave viewers breathless, making them consider even the most familiar objects (a U-Haul trailer, or a box of Oxydol detergent, etc.) in more abstract and provocative ways^{[citation needed]}.

Prints

In addition to painting, he has produced a vast array of prints, drawings and collages. One of his prints, Time Dust (1992), is thought to be the largest print in the world, measuring approximately 7 x 35 feet.

In 1994 he created the print Discover Graphics in celebration of a Smithsonian educational program detailing the printmaking process. The print's proceeds supported the Smithsonian Associates' cultural and educational programs, and an original of the lithograph hangs in the Smithsonian Art Collectors Program's ongoing exhibition, Graphic Eloquence in the S. Dillon Ripley Center in the National Mall.

Honors

Rosenquist has received numerous honors, including selection as "Art In America Young Talent USA" in 1963, appointment to a six-year term on the Board of the National Council of the Arts in 1978, and receiving the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement in 1988. In 2002, the Fundación Cristóbal Gabarrón conferred upon him its annual international award for art, in recognition of his great contributions to universal culture.

Since his first early career retrospectives in 1972 organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, he has been the subject of several gallery and museum exhibitions, both in the United States and abroad. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum organized a full-career retrospective in 2003, which traveled internationally, and was organized by curators Walter Hopps and Sarah Bancroft.^[3]

Rosenquist continues to produce large-scale commissions, including the recent three-painting suite The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (1997–1998) for Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany, and a painting planned for the ceiling of the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, France. His work continues to develop in exciting ways and is an ongoing influence on younger generations of artists. A note of interest would be that F-111 was mentioned in a chapter of Polaroids from the Dead by Douglas Coupland.

Personal

On April 25, 2009, a fire swept through Hernando County, Florida, where Rosenquist has lived for 30 years, burning the artist's house, studios, and warehouse. All of his paintings stored on his property were destroyed, including art for an upcoming show.^[4][5][6]

Gallery

"Gift Wrapped Doll #37", 1997, oil on canvas, property of the Seavest Collection

"For Love", 1965, color photosilkscreen, property of Museum of New Mexico

References

External links

• Rosenquist's official site (Requires Macromedia Flash)
• Photographs of James Rosenquist by photographer Russ Blaise
• Interview with db artmag
• Pop Art Masters - James Rosenquist
• In the Studio: James Rosenquist
• Interview with Myartspace
• Exhibition The Hole in the Center of Time with the latest works at Jablonka Galerie, Berlin
• [1] Rosenquist's Discover Graphics, the Smithsonian Art Collectors Program.
• Rosenquist Writ Large, by Himself, Dwight Garner, The New York Times, 27 October 2009