James Rosenquist - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 15, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Catalogue Essay

    James Rosenquist’s career is often defined by the zeitgeist of the 1960splacing him under the same rubric asWarhol, Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns,and Oldenburg. His brash paintings dream of progress and the ever explodingculture of the consumer. He is a supreme painter in the traditional sense, buthis approach is unconventional. UnlikeWarhol and Lichtenstein, who focuson a singular image, Rosenquist juxtaposes and combines images that appearto have no relationship, and disregards traditional figure/ground relationships.By adapting his skills as a commercial sign painter, he developed his own idiom.The stylized quality and vulgarity of a billboard is appropriated to expressbanal objects and popular icons typical of American Pop imagery.In the early 1980s Rosenquist developed a pictorial technique usingcrosshatches. By placing slashing and curvilinear forms, one image cutsinto the other. Illusionary incisions are made with paint.These paradoxicalentities compete with one another providing drama and tension.The imageryfor works like the Untitled, 1990 painting derived from the tropical flora ofthe natural wetlands in Florida where Rosenquist lived and worked.Superimposing the lush and vibrant flowers are women’s faces in conveyingcivilization’s interference with the natural world.The floral painting remainsdominant “...the plant life suggests open possibilities invoking a respect fornature, its overwhelming power, and its inherent beauty...,” (M. Harwood,James Rosenquist:A Retrospective, NewYork, 2003, p. 204).

 

56

Untitled

1990
Oil on canvas laid down on panel.
80 x 66 in. (203.2 x 167.6 cm).
Signed and dated “James Rosenquist 1990” on the overlap.

Estimate
$400,000 - 600,000 

Sold for $481,000

Contemporary Art Part I

15 Nov 2007, 7pm
New York