James Rosenquist
September 2004
Rosenquist's huge paintings, of which F-111 (1965) measuring 86 feet, is one of the most famous, are clearly influenced by his early experience as a commercial sign painter of billboards in Times Square. A highly successful artist, Rosenquist suffered an unexpected setback in 1971 when his wife and son were seriously injured in a car crash. Rosenquist escaped with a perforated lung and broken ribs. Deeply in debt and depressed, Rosenquist took up the threads of his career by recreating many of his earlier paintings in print.
Working with master printer Maurice Sanchez in New York and at Petersburg Press in London, the artist painstakingly re-rendered each image by hand. Sanchez described the process:
1. Constance W. Glen, Time Dust. James Rosenquist, Complete Graphics: 1962-1992 (New York, 1993), p. 52
2. Op. Cit., p. 54
Working with master printer Maurice Sanchez in New York and at Petersburg Press in London, the artist painstakingly re-rendered each image by hand. Sanchez described the process:
He didn't use crisp 4 x 5 transparencies he could have got at Leo's (the Castelli Gallery) ...But reproductions of paintings - way-off, hyped-up reproductions that added another dimension to his original version. The reproductions were benday dotted, and the closest you could get to that look was with an airbrush, instead of using tusche and trying to paint it again. We proofed the first ten images in East Hampton, and I packed up the plates and took them to London, to a new shop, new people. I saved Zone, which I wasn't sure I could handle, until last. The press made a terrible noise, and the tympan broke and creased the plate. The greatest print he made was ruined! Jim came over and said, "Well, let's get an airbrush and do it again." That is an artist. It's that kind of ability to just sit down and do it again that makes the difference. (1)
Rosenquist's major concern was:to see how skilfully I could do the images in lithography... To see if I could work in this medium, to see if I could get the feeling on a miniature scale. They were really like my notebook, and I was restudying the paintings in another medium. (2)
Rosenquist's imagery is mainly culled from advertisements, the iconic signs and symbols that surround one in everyday life. The 'Pegasus' symbol in Paperclip is familiar to all North Americans as the sign for Mobiglas. The artist employs his vast archive of newspaper and magazine cuttings as a major source for his work, as in the close-up of the woman's face and hand in Zone, which is taken from an advertisement for Pond's 'Angel-Skin' face cream.1. Constance W. Glen, Time Dust. James Rosenquist, Complete Graphics: 1962-1992 (New York, 1993), p. 52
2. Op. Cit., p. 54
Jennifer Ramkalawon