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

Graduation In Zion

        

        A cry of terror escaped from every breast.  All fled to starboard.

       But suddenly the ship was totally eased.  She was carried away and floated in the air for an imperceptible moment, then leaned over, fell on the ice floes, and there she underwent a rolling motion which made her rails crack.  What was happening?

        Lifted by the rising tide, pushed on by the blocks attacking her from behind, she was crossing the uncrossable ice-pack.  After a minute – a century – of this strange navigation, she had traversed this obstacle and fell back down on an ice-field; her weight made her pass through, and soon she was back in her element.  

        “We’re past the ice-pack!” exclaimed Johnson, rushing to the front of the brig.  

        “Thank God,” replied Hatteras.

      In effect, the brig was in a basin;  ice surrounded her on all sides and although her keel was in water, she could not move; but although she remained motionless, the field was moving for her.

         “We’re drifting, captain,” cried Johnson.

         “Let it happen.”

        I’ve been re-reading Jules Verne’s The Adventures of Captain Hatteras lately, so it’s probably not surprising that when I slept (and woke and slept and woke) last night, my dreaming and waking assumed the form of a ship navigating an ice-pack, continually rising and falling, being trapped and occasionally sliding free.  It’s nice finally to be awake with good morning light flowing in.  Soon, the dogs will want to go out.

        I fell asleep watching the CNN Republican candidates "debate", which was ok, but from what I saw, tending toward the predictable as entertainment fare, so sleep must have taken over early because the first time I woke up it was only just past 11 pm.

        Somewhere amid all the being trapped-in-ice sensations that Verne’s book (I know the dialogue seems creaky, but it’s really excellent and unique in my experience; it was a great favorite of Alfred Jarry’s also and contributed to his creation of Dr. Faustroll) prompted, which simply amplify other things I’ve been feeling, I also had a wonderful memory yesterday of an evening about 10 years ago when Caroline and I had drinks on a screened porch in the summer and watched a small spider construct a web for a couple of hours.  I know I’ve never seen anyone work so patiently, purposively and expertly, or convey a greater feeling of freedom.  He reminded me of those pictures of Jackson Pollock painting and of Jane silently creating one of her many art projects.

Notes:

1.  Text excerpted from Jules Verne, The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (trans. William Butcher).  Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002.

2.  Top photo:  Belgica trapped in ice near Antarctica.  1899

3.  Second photo:  Gauss trapped in ice, Antarctica, March 29, 1902.  Hot-air balloon employed for aerial photography at right-hand side of photo. 

4.  All images enlarge when left-clicked.