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Lot Essay
Painted in 1964, Be Beautiful is a monumental slice of vintage American life from the most important and influential period of Rosenquist's career. With its gleeful invocation to the viewer to 'Be beautiful', the painting mixes the energetic immediacy of advertizing with gigantism and a dose of irony to become a colossal and witty fragment of the modern American's media-drenched life, even more pertinent almost forty years later.
Only four years before Be Beautiful was painted, Rosenquist had quit his job as a billboard painter. He had been hailed as an artistic prodigy at a young age, but until then the only real success that this had led to were a scholarship and his sign-painting jobs. Released from the latter, Rosenquist had initially not known what direction his art would take, but within a short time he was creating monumental pictures that present themes akin to those of Pop in Surreal contexts and juxtapositions. By 1962, he was being celebrated in one-man exhibitions, and by 1964 was an established name at the cutting edge of the art scene.
Be Beautiful perfectly demonstrates how Rosenquist combined his skills as a billboard artist with his unique perspective in order to create a highly evocative, yet recognizable art. This perspective was in many ways literal: in Be Beautiful, only a fragmentary vision of a magazine-style advertisement is shown, and the viewer is treated to a similar view to that of a billboard painter who is so close to a magnified image that its entirety is obscured. Be Beautiful invokes Rosenquist's surreal ability to decontextualize and then recontextualize a source image. He strips it of meaning in order to subject it to a more rigorous analysis by the viewer, while also creating a visual overload that reflects the dynamism of the contemporary world and modern media. Rosenquist realized that such transformations provided the perfect metaphor for the modern experience in the America. He captures the sensory blast of everyday life, the fragmentary existence of the big city and the energy of the commercial spirit. The immense size of Be Beautiful makes this a visually explosive revelation.
The idea of the billboard painter from North Dakota becoming a superstar of the international art scene appears to embody the American Dream, and superficially Be Beautiful celebrates that dream. The fragmentary advert that we see displayed on such a scale tantalizingly dangles potential wealth and immaculate beauty before the viewer (or, in the case of the source image, the customer). If we buy a product, if we attempt to 'Be beautiful', we may even be rewarded with an Oldsmobile or $150,000. The car in the picture appears to gleam not only from the benefit of newness or cleaning products, but even from the acquired glory of its accessories--radio! Whitewall tires! Heating!
To the modern viewer, a sense of Happy Days-style nostalgia at this vision from an America of yore is unavoidable, yet in the early 1960s, Rosenquist was deliberately selecting images that were neither new nor old: 'I choose images common enough to pass without notice, old enough to be forgotten, but not old enough to trigger nostalgia' (Rosenquist, quoted in J. Goldman, James Rosenquist, exh.cat., New York, 1985, p. 13). He also explained this process with reference to themes such as cars and spaghetti that appear in his pictures, stating that:
'I painted the front of a 1950 Ford. I felt it was an anonymous image. I wasn't angry about that, and it wasn't a nostalgic image either. Just an image. I use images from old magazines--when I say old, I mean 1945 to 1950--a time we haven't started to ferry out as history yet. If it was the front end of a new car there would be people who would be passionate about it, and the front end of an old car might make people nostalgic. The images are like no-images. There is a freedom there. If it were abstract, people might make it into something.' (Rosenquist, 1964, quoted in E. Weiss, James Rosenquist Gemälde - Räume - Graphik, exh.cat., Cologne, 1972, p. 24).
In this way, Rosenquist avoided invoking American nostalgia or dazzling his viewers with the glamour of modernity. He selected images that were neutral enough to involve other emotions than wonder, envy or memory.
Unlike some of the Pop artists whose work was being celebrated during the same period and with whom he was inevitably linked, Rosenquist was a political artist, and importantly an emotional artist. Accordingly he often tried to distance himself from his Pop contemporaries. His art focused on pictorial, rather than popular, qualities. 'I wanted the space to be more important than the imagery,' he complained. 'I wanted to use images as tools. But it just didn't happen, because the dumb critics said, 'Oh, look. I can recognize that. That's a car, that's a hot dog, that's popular.' My work didn't have anything to do with popular images like chewing gum' (Rosenquist, quoted in J. Goldman, James Rosenquist, exh.cat., New York, 1985, p. 35). His paintings are not cool conceptual exercises. Rosenquist's experiences and his deep aesthetic sensitivity mean that his pictures are vividly felt, personal perspectives on the world and on modern American life.
The fine finish and precision that characterizes Be Beautiful belies Rosenquist's passionate love of paint; his gestures, recalling his commercial techniques and reflecting the scale of his paintings, are grand and sweeping, reminiscent in practice of the Abstract Expressionists who were being slowly eclipsed during the early 1960s. The contrast between those gestures and the finish of the final result was sometimes taken to be an unspoken criticism of the Ab-Ex artists, yet in many ways his painterly experiences showed him to be more directly their spiritual heir, as did his instinctive feel for color.
This level of personal associations would often drive the selection of Rosenquist's themes, and even affect their content and meaning to the artist. Through his use of commercial colors and commercial images, Rosenquist has created a visual language that taps into the iconography of modern life: Be Beautiful celebrates the skill and art of advertising while criticizing its impact at the same time.
Only four years before Be Beautiful was painted, Rosenquist had quit his job as a billboard painter. He had been hailed as an artistic prodigy at a young age, but until then the only real success that this had led to were a scholarship and his sign-painting jobs. Released from the latter, Rosenquist had initially not known what direction his art would take, but within a short time he was creating monumental pictures that present themes akin to those of Pop in Surreal contexts and juxtapositions. By 1962, he was being celebrated in one-man exhibitions, and by 1964 was an established name at the cutting edge of the art scene.
Be Beautiful perfectly demonstrates how Rosenquist combined his skills as a billboard artist with his unique perspective in order to create a highly evocative, yet recognizable art. This perspective was in many ways literal: in Be Beautiful, only a fragmentary vision of a magazine-style advertisement is shown, and the viewer is treated to a similar view to that of a billboard painter who is so close to a magnified image that its entirety is obscured. Be Beautiful invokes Rosenquist's surreal ability to decontextualize and then recontextualize a source image. He strips it of meaning in order to subject it to a more rigorous analysis by the viewer, while also creating a visual overload that reflects the dynamism of the contemporary world and modern media. Rosenquist realized that such transformations provided the perfect metaphor for the modern experience in the America. He captures the sensory blast of everyday life, the fragmentary existence of the big city and the energy of the commercial spirit. The immense size of Be Beautiful makes this a visually explosive revelation.
The idea of the billboard painter from North Dakota becoming a superstar of the international art scene appears to embody the American Dream, and superficially Be Beautiful celebrates that dream. The fragmentary advert that we see displayed on such a scale tantalizingly dangles potential wealth and immaculate beauty before the viewer (or, in the case of the source image, the customer). If we buy a product, if we attempt to 'Be beautiful', we may even be rewarded with an Oldsmobile or $150,000. The car in the picture appears to gleam not only from the benefit of newness or cleaning products, but even from the acquired glory of its accessories--radio! Whitewall tires! Heating!
To the modern viewer, a sense of Happy Days-style nostalgia at this vision from an America of yore is unavoidable, yet in the early 1960s, Rosenquist was deliberately selecting images that were neither new nor old: 'I choose images common enough to pass without notice, old enough to be forgotten, but not old enough to trigger nostalgia' (Rosenquist, quoted in J. Goldman, James Rosenquist, exh.cat., New York, 1985, p. 13). He also explained this process with reference to themes such as cars and spaghetti that appear in his pictures, stating that:
'I painted the front of a 1950 Ford. I felt it was an anonymous image. I wasn't angry about that, and it wasn't a nostalgic image either. Just an image. I use images from old magazines--when I say old, I mean 1945 to 1950--a time we haven't started to ferry out as history yet. If it was the front end of a new car there would be people who would be passionate about it, and the front end of an old car might make people nostalgic. The images are like no-images. There is a freedom there. If it were abstract, people might make it into something.' (Rosenquist, 1964, quoted in E. Weiss, James Rosenquist Gemälde - Räume - Graphik, exh.cat., Cologne, 1972, p. 24).
In this way, Rosenquist avoided invoking American nostalgia or dazzling his viewers with the glamour of modernity. He selected images that were neutral enough to involve other emotions than wonder, envy or memory.
Unlike some of the Pop artists whose work was being celebrated during the same period and with whom he was inevitably linked, Rosenquist was a political artist, and importantly an emotional artist. Accordingly he often tried to distance himself from his Pop contemporaries. His art focused on pictorial, rather than popular, qualities. 'I wanted the space to be more important than the imagery,' he complained. 'I wanted to use images as tools. But it just didn't happen, because the dumb critics said, 'Oh, look. I can recognize that. That's a car, that's a hot dog, that's popular.' My work didn't have anything to do with popular images like chewing gum' (Rosenquist, quoted in J. Goldman, James Rosenquist, exh.cat., New York, 1985, p. 35). His paintings are not cool conceptual exercises. Rosenquist's experiences and his deep aesthetic sensitivity mean that his pictures are vividly felt, personal perspectives on the world and on modern American life.
The fine finish and precision that characterizes Be Beautiful belies Rosenquist's passionate love of paint; his gestures, recalling his commercial techniques and reflecting the scale of his paintings, are grand and sweeping, reminiscent in practice of the Abstract Expressionists who were being slowly eclipsed during the early 1960s. The contrast between those gestures and the finish of the final result was sometimes taken to be an unspoken criticism of the Ab-Ex artists, yet in many ways his painterly experiences showed him to be more directly their spiritual heir, as did his instinctive feel for color.
This level of personal associations would often drive the selection of Rosenquist's themes, and even affect their content and meaning to the artist. Through his use of commercial colors and commercial images, Rosenquist has created a visual language that taps into the iconography of modern life: Be Beautiful celebrates the skill and art of advertising while criticizing its impact at the same time.