Everything about James Rosenquist totally explained
James Rosenquist (born
November 29,
1933) is an acclaimed
American artist and one of the protagonists in the
pop-art movement.
Background and education
He was born in
Grand Forks, North Dakota and grew up as an only child. His parents moved from town to town to look for work, finally settling in
Minneapolis. His mother, who was also a painter, encouraged her son to have an artistic interst. In junior high school, Rosenquist won a short-term scholarship to study at the
Minneapolis School of Art and subsequently studied painting at the
University of Minnesota from
1952 to
1954. In
1955, at the age of 21, he moved to
New York City on scholarship to study at the
Art Students League.
Career
Early Years and Pop
From
1957 to
1960, he earned his living as a
billboard painter. This was perfect training, as it turned out, for an artist about to explode onto the
pop art scene. Rosenquist deftly applied sign-painting techniques to the large-scale paintings he began creating in
1960. Like other pop artists, Rosenquist adapted the visual language of
advertising and
pop culture (often funny, vulgar, and outrageous) to the context of fine art. Rosenquist achieved international acclaim in
1965 with the room-scale painting
F-111.
Rosenquist has stated the following about his involvement in the Pop Art movement: "They(art critics) called me a Pop artist because I used recognizable imagery. The critics like to group people together. I didn't meet Andy Warhol until 1964. I didn't really know Andy or Roy Lichtenstein that well. We all emerged separately."
Mature work
His specialty is taking fragmented, oddly disproportionate images and combining, overlapping, and juxtaposing them on canvases to create visual stories. This can leave viewers breathless, making them consider even the most familiar objects (a
U-Haul trailer, or a box of
Oxydol detergent, etc.) in more abstract and provocative ways.
Prints
In addition to painting, he's produced a vast array of prints, drawings and
collages. One of his prints,
Time Dust (
1992), is thought to be the largest print in the world, measuring approximately 7 x 35 feet.
Honors
Rosenquist has received numerous honors, including selection as "Art In America Young Talent USA" in
1963, appointment to a six-year term on the Board of the
National Council of the Arts in
1978, and receiving the
Golden Plate Award from the
American Academy of Achievement in
1988. In
2002, the
Fundación Cristóbal Gabarrón conferred upon him its annual international award for art, in recognition of his great contributions to universal culture.
Since his first early career retrospectives in
1972 organized by the
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, and the
Wallraf-Richartz Museum,
Cologne, he's been the subject of several gallery and museum exhibitions, both in the United States and abroad. He continues to produce large-scale commissions, including the recent three-painting suite
The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (
1997–
1998) for
Deutsche Guggenheim,
Berlin, Germany, and a painting planned for the ceiling of the
Palais de Chaillot in
Paris, France. His work has continued to develop in exciting ways and is an ongoing influence on younger generations of artists. A note of interest would be that
F-111 was mentioned in a chapter of
Polaroids from the Dead by
Douglas Coupland.
Further Information
Get more info on 'James Rosenquist'.
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