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

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  • “I’m not a fan of CGI or any other digitally created or pixelated pictures; they always seem empty and vapid. I’m much more interested in creating illusions and using physical, tangible elements.”
    —James Rosenquist
    Toward the end of his career, Rosenquist sought to experiment with more abstract and theoretical imagery than he had in his earlier work as a result, wanting his exploration of time to be less autobiographical, stating, “they’re about things that I have only a vague notion of.”i Thus, he sought to develop an entirely new pictorial language by utilizing illusions and physical elements; the resulting Time Lines combines the theme of space, and the spinning mirror, which he more often uses to represent a clock but, in this case, reads “I LOVE YOU.” 

     

    Space was always an area of fascination for Rosenquist and one he visited consistently in his career. His Midwestern childhood exposed him to clear, star-coated night skies and thus a limitless imaginative scope. At the time Rosenquist created Time Lines, he was working on a collection of paintings exploring the visualization of the multiverse. One of these paintings, Multiverse You Are, I Am (2012) bears a striking resemblance to Time Lines, in which colorful splinters of galaxies triangulate and explode from a central point or points. The entire theme centers around questions of the endless possibility of space, as the artist explains, “space was not so deep it was impossible to comprehend. The multiverse revolves around the idea that there must be other people out there—not in our solar system—but in a parallel universe.”i

     

    Multiverse You Are, I Am, 2012. Oil on canvas. 11' 4" x 10' 5" (3.45 x 3.18 m) [136" x 125"]. Private Collection. Artist studio registration # 12.07 © James Rosenquist, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

    “In dealing with an elusive concept like Time, I’ve been forced to come up with devices…a spinning mirror reflects what’s in front of it without distortion, yet if you paint numbers on the surface, they blur and disappear as the mirror turns.”
    —James Rosenquist
    Time, mentioned explicitly in the title, is also referenced in the mirror element. Also featured in The Memory Continues but the Clock Disappears (lot 248), it represents time through the idea of the spinning clock. While the mirror turns, whatever written on it disappears. As the artist says, “the mirror spins, the ground is whirling, energy is coming off it while the numbers on the clock turn into a rainbow of blurred colors. It’s so peculiar because the ground (the surface of the mirror) remains the same, yet everything on it physically changes.”

     

    In combining space and time with the words, “I LOVE YOU,” Rosenquist encourages us to question our own relationship to love and how it fits in our limited time living in this cosmic, colorful world. 

     

     

    i James Rosenquist, Painting Below Zero, 2009, p. 342.

    ii Judith Goldman, “James Rosenquist: A Space Odyssey 2012,” James Rosenquist: Multiverse You Are, I Am, p. 18.

    • Literature

      Ars Publicata, James Rosenquist, 2012.01

249

Time Lines

2012
Lithograph in colors, on wove paper mounted to aluminum panel, with etched and hand-colored rotating mirror, contained in the original white painted artist's frame.
S. 26 x 21 3/4 in. (66 x 55.2 cm)
framed 27 1/2 x 23 x 1 3/4 in. (69.9 x 58.4 x 4.4 cm)

Signed, titled and numbered 'AP 1/10' in pencil (an artist's proof, the edition was 44), published by Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, New York (with their blindstamp), framed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$2,000 - 3,000 

Sold for $7,938

Works from the James Rosenquist Estate

New York Auction 15 February 2024