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, 23sections. 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 byexchange).



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 thepainting in 1964, in the middle of a turbulent decade marked by the escalating VietnamWar.Funded by citizens’tax dollars, the F-111 fighter-bomber plane was being developed as the USA’s newest, mosttechnologically advanced weapon. Rather than celebrate its military might, Rosenquist used theplane as a symbolof the economic implications of war. As it flies “through the flak of consumersociety,” he later explained, the jet’s sharply pointed fuselage pierces superimposed images of commercial products andreferences to war, such as the bullet-shaped hair dryer floating above a young girl’s head and the atomic mushroom cloud frozen behind abeachumbrella. 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 deathmachine, consumerism, the media, and advertising.” Its jumps of scale, surprising juxtapositions offragments 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 agroup of collages the artist made in preparation for this monumentalcomposition. 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 ofperipheral vision, Rosenquist wanted the painting to create an immersive environment that would heightenthe viewer’s awareness of his or her own position in space. He cited artisticprecedents for this ambition in works such as Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and the largehorizontal paintings by Abstract Expressionist artists Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman.

James Rosenquistphotographed by Dennis Hopper, 1964


 

NOTE:  This Museum of Modern Art press release announcing the exhibitionof James Rosenquist's F-111 in proper wrap-around style along withsome ancillary studies for the painting seemed like an appropriate item tore-circulate here, despite Blogger's scale, sizing and colorlimitations. 

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


This morning I read a fairly recent interview withRosenquist (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 ordidactic, and comes from the way he forces pupils to open as wide aspossible to take in and assimilate withoutbarriers 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 andI'm lookingforward to a visit.  Iexpect I'll stop in at my onigiri place on W. 55th for lunch and fill the vacant spaces in mymind with other memories of hours spent at the Leo Castelli Gallery during itsbeautifully golden years.

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

 


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