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Lot Essay
One of the three figureheads of 1960s Pop Art, James Rosenquist questioned mass media by layering imagery and meaning in his billboard-inspired compositions. Untitled (Jungle Presence) expands on the artist’s groundbreaking early works by introducing visual intrigue through curvilinear slicing of the source material. By combining disparate images into one, Rosenquist seeks to emulate the visual confusion experienced from the everyday barrage of media sources. Although smaller in scale and less politically-motivated than his works like President Elect (1960-61/64) and the massive F-111 (1964), Untitled (Jungle Presence) continues in a similar style that combines contrasting imagery for both visual and conceptual effect.
Seemingly cut into an image of blooming green foliage, a twisting line zig-zags through the front of the composition revealing two faces. Reminiscent of collaged magazine pages or an artfully removed section of subway advertisement, this layered effect is typical of Rosenquist. By juxtaposing the two images, he creates an optical illusion that suggests depth while mystifying the depiction of three-dimensional space. In the more pervasive image of greenery, young leaves bend and curl around three scalloped flower buds. The sharp forms and blurred background suggest photographic depth of field and the artist’s dexterity with the brush furthers this reading. Interrupting the serenity of nature, the central form gives a brief glimpse into equally well-rendered depictions of two women’s faces. The face on the right is obscured, but a single eye on the left stares out at the viewer through a tiny slit. The manner in which Rosenquist has created this amalgam elicits a sensory overload. Each newly discovered element is almost instantly overwhelmed by another until the entire work vibrates like the lighted ads of Times Square.
After studying painting in Minnesota in the early 1950s, Rosenquist moved to New York in 1955 where he studied at the Art Students League on a scholarship. During this time, he earned a living as a billboard painter, and soon began to apply methods learned in this commercial art form to his own work. Creating huge canvases that borrowed from myriad consumerist images in jolting juxtapositions, Rosenquist allied his practice with the formative years of the Pop Art movement. Known for depicting collections of images from movies, magazines, and mass media, his seemingly dispassionate style was similar to the painted advertisements he had previously produced. This focus on composition and content over direct stylistic interpretation separated Rosenquist’s works from those of his contemporaries like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. By introducing more overt political themes and social commentary through image selection and arrangement alone, he cast a direct light on the underlying issues central to Pop.
Working with commercial techniques allowed Rosenquist to appropriate a recognizable style and use it to spark new conversations. This also allowed the artist to focus more on creating dynamic compositions that were instantly recognizable for their content but not always for their meaning. Peter Schjeldahl, on the occasion of Rosenquist’s retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York, wrote about the artist’s use of billboard painting, saying, “Was importing the method into art a bit of a cheap trick? So were Warhol’s photo silk-screening and Lichtenstein’s limning of panels from comic strips. The goal in all cases was to fuse painting aesthetics with the semiotics of media-drenched contemporary reality. The naked efficiency of anti-personal artmaking defines classic Pop. It’s as if someone were inviting you to inspect the fist with which he simultaneously punches you” (P. Schjeldahl, “Time Pieces,” New Yorker, October 23, 2003). By using a visual language that the audience was familiar with, Rosenquist was able to deliver his treatises on consumer culture more easily. Continuing this conversation in Untitled (Jungle Presence), Rosenquist again invites the viewer to study his compositions more closely while confounding the eye with vibrantly contrasting imagery.
At the core of Rosenquist’s practice is an indebtedness to earlier collage artists. Borrowing from the Surrealists, the artist plucked images from past issues of various publications (mainly Life magazine) and reproduced them as gargantuan copies in paint. “Collage is still a very contemporary medium, whether it is done with little bits of paper or in the cinema,” Rosenquist once noted, “The essence of collage is to take very disparate imagery and put it together and the result becomes an idea, not so much a picture. It’s like listening to the radio and getting your own idea from all these images that are often antidotes - acid - to each other. They make sparks or they don’t. The best thing is that they make sparks” (J. Rosenquist, quoted in J. Blaut, “James Rosenquist: Collage and the Painting of Modern Life,” in W. Hopps & S. Bancroft, James Rosenquist: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, 2003, p. 17). To Rosenquist, these sparks are the catalysts that bring each section of his paintings together. By observing interactions among the disparate parts and calling attention to each image via careful arrangement and precise brushwork, Rosenquist threads together visual stanzas that speak beyond their billboard roots.
Seemingly cut into an image of blooming green foliage, a twisting line zig-zags through the front of the composition revealing two faces. Reminiscent of collaged magazine pages or an artfully removed section of subway advertisement, this layered effect is typical of Rosenquist. By juxtaposing the two images, he creates an optical illusion that suggests depth while mystifying the depiction of three-dimensional space. In the more pervasive image of greenery, young leaves bend and curl around three scalloped flower buds. The sharp forms and blurred background suggest photographic depth of field and the artist’s dexterity with the brush furthers this reading. Interrupting the serenity of nature, the central form gives a brief glimpse into equally well-rendered depictions of two women’s faces. The face on the right is obscured, but a single eye on the left stares out at the viewer through a tiny slit. The manner in which Rosenquist has created this amalgam elicits a sensory overload. Each newly discovered element is almost instantly overwhelmed by another until the entire work vibrates like the lighted ads of Times Square.
After studying painting in Minnesota in the early 1950s, Rosenquist moved to New York in 1955 where he studied at the Art Students League on a scholarship. During this time, he earned a living as a billboard painter, and soon began to apply methods learned in this commercial art form to his own work. Creating huge canvases that borrowed from myriad consumerist images in jolting juxtapositions, Rosenquist allied his practice with the formative years of the Pop Art movement. Known for depicting collections of images from movies, magazines, and mass media, his seemingly dispassionate style was similar to the painted advertisements he had previously produced. This focus on composition and content over direct stylistic interpretation separated Rosenquist’s works from those of his contemporaries like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. By introducing more overt political themes and social commentary through image selection and arrangement alone, he cast a direct light on the underlying issues central to Pop.
Working with commercial techniques allowed Rosenquist to appropriate a recognizable style and use it to spark new conversations. This also allowed the artist to focus more on creating dynamic compositions that were instantly recognizable for their content but not always for their meaning. Peter Schjeldahl, on the occasion of Rosenquist’s retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York, wrote about the artist’s use of billboard painting, saying, “Was importing the method into art a bit of a cheap trick? So were Warhol’s photo silk-screening and Lichtenstein’s limning of panels from comic strips. The goal in all cases was to fuse painting aesthetics with the semiotics of media-drenched contemporary reality. The naked efficiency of anti-personal artmaking defines classic Pop. It’s as if someone were inviting you to inspect the fist with which he simultaneously punches you” (P. Schjeldahl, “Time Pieces,” New Yorker, October 23, 2003). By using a visual language that the audience was familiar with, Rosenquist was able to deliver his treatises on consumer culture more easily. Continuing this conversation in Untitled (Jungle Presence), Rosenquist again invites the viewer to study his compositions more closely while confounding the eye with vibrantly contrasting imagery.
At the core of Rosenquist’s practice is an indebtedness to earlier collage artists. Borrowing from the Surrealists, the artist plucked images from past issues of various publications (mainly Life magazine) and reproduced them as gargantuan copies in paint. “Collage is still a very contemporary medium, whether it is done with little bits of paper or in the cinema,” Rosenquist once noted, “The essence of collage is to take very disparate imagery and put it together and the result becomes an idea, not so much a picture. It’s like listening to the radio and getting your own idea from all these images that are often antidotes - acid - to each other. They make sparks or they don’t. The best thing is that they make sparks” (J. Rosenquist, quoted in J. Blaut, “James Rosenquist: Collage and the Painting of Modern Life,” in W. Hopps & S. Bancroft, James Rosenquist: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, 2003, p. 17). To Rosenquist, these sparks are the catalysts that bring each section of his paintings together. By observing interactions among the disparate parts and calling attention to each image via careful arrangement and precise brushwork, Rosenquist threads together visual stanzas that speak beyond their billboard roots.