James Rosenquist's F-111 Exhibited In Original Castelli Gallery Wrap-Around Configuration (Worth Noting And Visiting)

  

James Rosenquist. F-111 (detail from Section 3). 1964-65. Oil on canvas with aluminum, 23 sections. 10 x 86′ (304.8 x 2621.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alex L. Hillman and Lillie P. Bliss Bequest (both by exchange).



NEW YORK, NY. (MOMA)- 


        James Rosenquist designed the eighty-six-foot-long F-111 to wrap around the four walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery, at 4 East Seventy-Seventh Street in Manhattan. He began the painting in 1964, in the middle of a turbulent decade marked by the escalating Vietnam War. Funded by citizens’ tax dollars, the F-111 fighter-bomber plane was being developed as the USA’s newest, most technologically advanced weapon. Rather than celebrate its military might, Rosenquist used the plane as a symbol of the economic implications of war. As it flies “through the flak of consumer society,” he later explained, the jet’s sharply pointed fuselage pierces superimposed images of commercial products and references to war, such as the bullet-shaped hair dryer floating above a young girl’s head and the atomic mushroom cloud frozen behind a beach umbrella. Through its expansive network of colliding visual motifs, unfolding across twenty-three panels, F-111 questions what the artist has described as “the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising.” Its jumps of scale, surprising juxtapositions of fragments of imagery, and vivid palette exemplify Rosenquist’s singular contribution to Pop art in the United States.

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Section 4

     
        F-111 is presented here as it was first exhibited at the Castelli Gallery in 1965, now also alongside a group of collages the artist made in preparation for this monumental composition. Rosenquist was well acquainted with painting on this immense scale: before becoming an artist he had earned a living as a billboard painter in New York City. Interested in the phenomenon of peripheral vision, Rosenquist wanted the painting to create an immersive environment that would heighten the viewer’s awareness of his or her own position in space. He cited artistic precedents for this ambition in works such as Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and the large horizontal paintings by Abstract Expressionist artists Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman.

James Rosenquist photographed by Dennis Hopper, 1964


 

NOTE:  This Museum of Modern Art press release announcing the exhibition of James Rosenquist's F-111 in proper wrap-around style along with some ancillary studies for the painting seemed like an appropriate item to re-circulate here, despite Blogger's scale, sizing and color limitations. 

Among other things, Rosenquist's great painting stirs up many happy memories in me about my early days of discovering how great painting can be and how it can open your eyes to the world in different ways than literature and music.  When I was in high school, my simultaneous exposure to and absorption of Pop art, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism propelled me into becoming the person I remain (at least what's left of him). 


This morning I read a fairly recent interview with Rosenquist (who always gives trenchant interviews) denying (in a way that seems contrary to the MOMA quote included above) that he was expressing any specific  dogmatic political views in this intense, dramatic work.  The inquisitor was doubtful about this, but I'm not.  For me, the power of Rosenquist's art is primarily visual, not literary or didactic, and comes from the way he forces pupils to open as wide as possible to take in and assimilate without barriers or impediments the power and scale of ocular experience.  Overwhelming and jarring at first, structural significance,  fine details and discernment come later.


Anyway, I haven't seen F-111 in person for quite some time and I'm looking forward to a visit.  I expect I'll stop in at my onigiri place on W. 55th for lunch and fill the vacant spaces in my mind with other memories of hours spent at the Leo Castelli Gallery during its beautifully golden years.

James Rosenquist (aged 4) pictured with his parents, North Dakota, 1937

 


F-111 as originally exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York City, 1965

Up Periscope (Dreaming of the Queen)

I hit the office at 5:44 this morning after passing out around 9:45 the evening before.  I finally put a quilt on the bed to supplement the pretty but porous summer blankets and slept more comfortably than I had in a long time.  From 2:22 to 3:33 I dreamed about preparing a speech for the British Parliament concerning my professional experiences during the recession.  Although I tried to keep things as “light” as possible by leavening my somewhat lengthy remarks with jokes and funny (I thought; Caroline said many of them seemed bitter) stories, they were trenchant nonetheless and the audience, who I was at that point only anticipating in my head, seemed rapt.  As I envisioned them, they looked like one of those monolithic Loony-Tunes backdrop cartoon audiences who don’t  breathe and are visually one flat undifferentiated mass.  

 

The Queen came by to attend my drafting and was very nice – interested, concerned and sympathetic.  My brother-in-law and former sister-in-law, whom I was surprised to see, paid close attention also.  Jane was excited about the trip to London.  Although I am a nervous public speaker, I always try to be thoroughly familiar with my material and to practice a lot.  The fact that I would be using teleprompters was encouraging.  It was difficult settling on a title or a short description of my subject. I was undecided among  Human Nature, Human Nature and Its Shortcomings, Human Nature Is Horrible or You Wouldn’t Believe What I’ve Learned About Human Nature.   

The Queen was very helpful on this score and you could tell what an experienced person she is.  It’s 5:55 now.  (Jane and I often joke about my peculiar waking and sleeping times, the joke currently ending on variations of waking up at 6:66.)  Because it’s still baseball season and a game is sometimes on when I fall asleep with all its numerals going, I wonder whether the game is somehow setting me like an alarm clock, which makes you wonder who is setting the game?  My ensemble, incidentally, for my Parliament speech includes a stiff blue-grey military type jacket with braids on the sleeves.  No epaulets.  I need to keep working on the speech.  I need to find a way to end on an optimistic note.