“History is remembered by its art, not its war machines.”
—James Rosenquist

 

A lithographic interpretation of his massive history painting of the same name, F-111’s iconic imagery stands at the forefront of Rosenquist’s expansive oeuvre. The artist’s early interest in newly developed aircrafts – his father had been a pilot – first inspired his depiction of the warplane, having seen a photograph of the General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark when it was in its experimental stage of development. Rosenquist recalled, “I remember thinking, how terrible that taxpayers’ money is being spent on this war weapon that is going to rain death down on some innocent population halfway around the world for some purpose we don’t even understand, while at the same time this warplane is providing a lucrative lifestyle for aircraft workers in Texas and on Long Island.”ⁱ Rosenquist’s interpretation of the F-111 interrogates this notion, that the proliferation of the military-industrial complex helps support American industry and thus American life. 

 

Created and displayed to wrap around the front room of Leo Castelli Gallery and cover all four walls, the original painting of F-111 envelops the viewer like Monet’s Water Lilies, an emphasis on scale and peripheral vision derived from Rosenquist’s billboard-painting past and notions of peripheral vision articulated by his friend and color field painter Barnett Newman.ⁱⁱ The titles of the individual prints of F-111 – South, West, North, and East – reference the immersive compositional configuration of the immense painting, and Rosenquist would continue to embrace the periphery throughout his print practice. The print interpretation of F-111, while smaller in scale than the room-sized painting, is still monumental: each horizontal print measures a five and a half feet long and manifests the same vivacious Pop expressions as its painted counterpart.

 

The F-111 lithographs demonstrate a remarkable range of colors: delicate washes of lavender and blue-green, heavily-saturated areas of rose, violet, ultramarine, and yellow, along with a fluorescent orange-red. The brilliance of these tones captures the highly aestheticized representations of atomic warfare found in the very same Life magazines that Rosenquist collaged into F-111’s composition, reflecting a phenomenon dubbed “atomic sublime” by historian and photographer Peter Bacon Hales.ⁱⁱⁱ In fact, nearly all the commercial imagery found in F-111 can be traced back to 1940s and 50s advertisements in Life, including his ever-present spaghetti motif.^iv Under Rosenquist’s command, these ads become a visual metaphor for the entwining of American’s rampant consumerism and extensive military operations.

 

 “In F-111, I used a fighter bomber flying through the flak of consumer society to question the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising.”
—James Rosenquist

 

South, the first of the four F-111 prints, begins with a field of spaghetti, one of Rosenquist’s most iconic motifs, before jumping to a more abstracted, almost psychedelic panel with swirls of pale yellow and red. Soon, the tail end of the titular F-111 jet is visible, with a delicate floral pattern taken from a 1955 Sherwin Williams advertisement printed over the aircraft like wallpaper. When Rosenquist first saw a pattern applied with a wallpaper roller, he thought it looked like silvery acid rain.^v Suddenly, American domestic life and heavy industry are intertwined, atop a gridded wash of lavender.

 

A track hurdle from a 1948 Texaco ad espousing the oil brand’s “top performance” unifies South with West, stretching across both prints along with the rear of the F-111 jet and the Sherwin Williams pattern. Centrally, a Firestone tire turned horizontal stands for American industry and the military-industrial complex. The connection between Firestone and war is historically apparent, as the company helped develop America’s first nuclear missile In the 1950s.^vi Automobile consumption also thrived during this period of global conflict; General Motors recorded the largest profit ever achieved by an American company during the Vietnam War.^vii Below the tire, an angel food cake represented a missile silo to Rosenquist, both with holes at their center. Rosequist topped the confection with flags that resemble territorial markers, declaring properties such as “PROTEIN” and “VITAMIN-B,” adding a nutritional flair that recalls American diet culture and hyper-fortified foods.

The pilot of F-111 takes charge in North: a young girl from a Dow Chemical ad, she, representing the next generation, is the motivator and supposed beneficiary of the suburban way of life, the ultimate emblem of what the military is to defend. Her chrome-plated helmet, which seen on its own could be mistaken for an airplane turbine or missile warhead, is in fact a hair dryer hood, plucked from a Coca Cola advertisement. She sits atop a radioactive green lawn and gazes out at a fork twirling a fluorescent serving of spaghetti. Nearby, delicately colored light bulbs rendered in pastel shades are reminiscent of Easter eggs; positioned by the plane’s doors, they become bombs. Above these light bulb bombs shines the emblem of the American air force. Here, Rosenquist considers color as it relates to the military: the emblem of the Korean air force is the same as America’s, only in different colors. “The same symbol in one color meant friend. In another color it meant enemy.”^viii

 

A photograph of a mushroom cloud from Life magazine merges with umbrella from Canada Dry ad in East, superimposed with the airplane’s “U.S. AIR FORCE” text. The collaged scene of enjoyment and destruction is reminiscent of resorts and hotels that would advertise the atomic bomb tests as spectacular tourist attractions.^ix “People would sit under beach umbrellas with their iced drinks and watch these mushroom clouds in the desert,” Rosenquist recollected.^x To the right, a diver’s air bubbles echo the shape of this massive explosion. Rosequist described this gasp of air as being related to the breath of an atomic bomb, or the gulp of someone’s last breath within it. Grey fabric drapes below this scene, under the nose of the plane. The idea for this cloth came to Rosenquist from the toy guns where pulling the trigger shoots out a flag that says “BANG!” – a false threat, the kind of threat that created the F-111. Finally, to the far right, the composition ends just how it begins, completing this flight through flak with an invitation for the viewer to enjoy a second plate of Rosenquist’s signature spaghetti.

 

 

ⁱ James Rosenquist, Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art, 2009, p. 153.

ⁱⁱ Ibid, p. 154.

ⁱⁱⁱ Peter Bacon Hales, “The Atomic Sublime,” unpublished manuscript quoted in Craig Adcock, “James Rosenquist F-111: A Guernica for Our Times,” Art & Culture vol. 2, no. 1, 1990, p. 122.

^iv Stephan Diederich and Yilmaz Dziewior, James Rosenquist: Painting as Immersion, 2017, pp. 140-141.

^v James Rosenquist, Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art, 2009, p. 162.

^vi Tino Grass, “F-111,” in Stephan Diederich and Yilmaz Dziewior, James Rosenquist: Painting As Immersion, 2017, p. 147.

^vii Walter Rugaber, “G.M. Profit Topped $2.1-Billion in 1965; G.M. TAKES LEAD AS PROFIT MAKER,” The New York Times, February 1, 1966, p. 1.

^viii James Rosenquist, Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art, 2009, p. 160.

^ix Tino Grass, “F-111,” in Stephan Diederich and Yilmaz Dziewior, James Rosenquist: Painting As Immersion, 2017, p. 148.

^x James Rosenquist, Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art, 2009, p. 159.