“[High Technology and Mysticism: A Meeting Point] gets into film, film techniques, and cinematography.”
—James Rosenquist
High Technology and Mysticism: A Meeting Point is Rosenquist’s first and only foray into a thorough examination of photography in printmaking, though his interest in film began a decade earlier in the form of several unfinished film exploits. He describes his process working on the series of seven lithographs: “I went to [unusual] lengths to take photographs. I was specifically trying to sandwich negatives together to bring about a certain look, a certain thing that I wanted through this photo process... I went to study where technology was illustrated, in libraries and other places. I went to hospitals to see [how it all related] to the human being. I went all over the place to see the sources of imagery from technology and [find out] what it had to do with so-called art. So I came up with these strange shapes, DNA symbols, electrical circuits.”i With High Technology and Mysticism: A Meeting Point, Rosenquist continues to push the boundaries of his artmaking to discover new expressions of humanity and contemporary life.
The titles of each individual lithograph in the series combine to create a poem: Somewhere Above The Sky Silverbirds Fly Ai-Cham [Somewhere]. Rosenquist describes the first work Somewhere as an “antique photograph of a dead child.” ii The child’s head becomes a blue rabbit, all incased in a web of electrical circuitry. Above takes on an even more surreal affect as the teeth and lips of a woman seamlessly blend into the face of a horse superimposed with another mechanical design in white. Each lithograph possesses technological elements represented by a web of numbers, lines, and symbols. With the series, Rosenquist hoped to inspire introspective questions about our relationship with technology and its impact on education, nature, media, and even religion. Forty years later, the impact of innovation and a growing dependence on technology in today’s society is still incredibly relevant.
The imagery and techniques used in High Technology and Mysticism: A Meeting Point are evocative of the work of Rosenquist’s close friend, Robert Rauschenberg through his method of layering and overlapping images and his use of photography in printmaking. Their friendship and bond persisted throughout their lives and resulted in a continued trading of ideas and a mutual fascination in the intersection of art and technology. Rosenquist reflects on the impact his friend had on him: “Bob could make art out of anything—he was a big influence on me. Now that I was able to make my own paintings I could do whatever I damn pleased. Then it became a question of, do you dare to do that? From Bob’s fearless art coups I gathered an important message: the bigger the risk you take, the more accurate your vision has to be.”iii