James Rosenquist - Works from the James Rosenquist Estate New York Thursday, February 15, 2024 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • “He is very much a visual poet. Sometimes his poems are epic; sometimes they are vast in subject or in scale—but they are still poems...He orchestrates combinations that seem absurd—but those combinations also make a curious sense, both formally and psychologically...It is just sheer poetic imagination.”
    —Water Hopps, co-organizer of Rosenquist’s 2003-2005 museum retrospective
    A more overtly political artwork made later in his career, The Xenophobic Movie Director of Our Foreign Policy sees Rosenquist return to direct reference of American current events after decades of creating more politically subdued compositions. The present print is based on a 2004 painting of the same name, executed during the first Presidential election to occur after the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001. Here, Rosenquist strongly evokes the cultural moment through a dreamlike montage and atmosphere: a longhorn skull on a flag-wrapped tree stump for a Texas-bred President, a golfer swinging through the “rough” of numbers, his stroke obscured by a light bulb containing Arabic script taken from the second line of the Quran. The leisurely attire of the golfer recalls the apolitical distance of a country club; this figure, the director-president, is the leader of a world bigger than his own. Meanwhile, the light bulb alludes to the flashing lights of the move-like spectacle this world event becomes under our director’s control. With movie magic, well-written scripts, and established producers, this leader crafts a world on screen that can convince an audience to fully embrace his foreign policy. Through his deft ability to create narrative with a collage of disparate parts, Rosenquist assembles a constellation of signifiers for the War on Terror. 

    • Literature

      Ars Publicata, James Rosenquist, 2011.01

247

The Xenophobic Movie Director or Our Foreign Policy

2011
Lithograph and screenprint in colors, on wove paper, with full margins.
I. 20 x 53 1/2 in. (50.8 x 135.9 cm)
S. 25 x 58 in. (63.5 x 147.3 cm)

Signed, titled (printed), dated '2004-2011' and numbered 'AP 1/10' in pencil (an artist's proof, the edition was 42), published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles (with their blindstamps), framed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$7,000 - 9,000 

Sold for $6,985

Works from the James Rosenquist Estate

New York Auction 15 February 2024