“I had a lot of fun on the farm with my cousin Archie. He’d been in the battalion that liberated Buchenwald and he told me they had used one room there for the latrine. He said he mistook a moonbeam for a piece of toilet paper on the latrine floor and tried to pick it up. ‘Damn, have you ever tried to wipe your ass with a moonbeam?’ I later made a print based on this image called Moon Beam Mistaken for the News.”
—James RosenquistOn the night of February 12, 1971, the non-stop party of the sixties during which Rosenquist enjoyed tremendous personal and professional success ended abruptly, on a dark and rain-swept Florida road. The Rosenquist family, including the artist, his then-wife Mary Lou, and their son John, were involved in a serious car accident, in which they were struck by not one, but two drivers: the first being a hit-and-run, the second being a result of the pouring rain and horrible driving conditions. While his wife remained in a coma for a month and eight-year-old John was unconscious for six weeks, Rosenquist emerged comparatively lucky, with three broken ribs and a concussion. In the aftermath of the wreck Rosenquist developed the prints of Cold Light Suite with master printer Donald Saff at Graphicstudio, many images punctuated by a cold, white moon-circle.
“We had not yet tired of watching television images of men walking on the moon. The excitement generated by visions of space exploration, the moon, the cosmos and all that is implied by humankind’s adventure into space was still at the forefront of the imagination of thoughtful people around the world.”
—Donald Saff, Graphicstudio master printerThis moon motif illuminates personal stories, remembrances, and the political climate of the moment, variously referring to the state of our planet and our actions on it in a reflection of Rosenquist’s own thoughtfulness about the world. Even when referencing the most lighthearted of stories, like the toilet paper anecdote from cousin Archie, Cold Light Suite remains visually more somber, poetic, and meditative, alluding to the loneliness of the isolated American flag on the moon (Mirrored Flag) and global events of war and conflict as reported in Tampa Tribune (Moon Beam Mistaken for the News and Cold Light). Conflation of the moon with newspapers suggests that space exploration might provide a new context for understanding earthly events, newspapers “coloring” (evident in the rainbow roll of Cold Light) our public perception of them, perhaps implying that mass media helps us separate current events from their material reality.
Other works in the series reflect more generally upon the results of space travel (Delivery Hat, lot 213), and the passage of time (Earth and Moon, lot 215). The tonality of the entire Cold Light Suite reflects Rosenquist’s state of mind following his accident, presenting a cool-toned, relative darkness compared to the multicolored vibrancy of his preceding compositions. The result are prints that embody the multipronged experience of existentialism, fright, and serenity that one imagines is felt while being on the moon.
Though the car accident would irrevocably alter Rosenquist’s life – a theme to which the artist further explored in the 1973-74 lithograph Off the Continental Divide (lot 223), Cold Light Suite played a crucial role in the family’s immediate recovery; given the family’s mounting medical expenses, the suite was sold in its entirety to cover the debt Rosenquist had accumulated. Cold Light Suite demarcates a turning point Rosenquist’s dynamic life and foreshadows his growing interest in outer space that would come to dominate the imagery of his later prints.