Product Description

Lipsticks, automobiles, dishwashers, men in business suits, spaghetti, rockets, airplanes, hairdryers, ice cream cones and pigtailed girls. James Rosenquist has always known how to combine these seemingly disparate but always all-American elements into whirlwind, billboard-sized collages of airbrushed surreal euphoria, slamming colors, patterns and objects into one another with the eye of an advertising man and the heart of a Pop artist. This momentous catalogue, published to accompany the first in-depth survey of the artist's work since 1972, will give long-overdue, in-depth attention to Rosenquist's singular achievement in American art. Extensive illustrations cover major works in diverse media, including work on paper that reveals the artist's process, as well as extensive new and archival photography. Essays focus on areas that have only been superficially addressed in the literature to date, bringing the level of Rosenquist scholarship up to that of his Pop Art contemporaries. Curator Walter Hopps provides an overview of the artist's career; Julia Blaut considers the artist's source collages in the context of 20th-century collage; Ruth E. Fine addresses Rosenquist's prints; art collector and former aeronautics researcher Eugene E. Epstein relates the artist's work to scientific phenomena. Also included are a definitive biography, exhibition history and illustrated chronology. The imagery was expendable to me but it was the color and texture that I was interested in, for instance, if I thought I felt like painting red I might have painted a great big tomato. --James Rosenquist (1972) Essays by Julia Blaut, Ruth E. Fine, Walter Hopps and Sarah Bancroft. Clothbound, 11.75 x 10 in./472 pgs / 346 color 50 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20157

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #741010 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10
• Released on: 2003-05-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 472 pages

About the Author
James Rosenquist was born in 1933 at Grand Forks, North Dakota. His family moved to Minneapolis in 1944 and he began to study art four years later. In 1955 he won a scholarship to the Art Students' League in New York, where he first met Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg. During his first years at the school he painted small-format abstract paintings and worked part-time as a driver. His next job saw him made head billboard painter at the ArtKraft -Strauss Corporation; around that same time he produced his pivotal large-scale work President Elect by combining J.F.K.'s face with sex and automobile imagery. The rest is Pop Art history: Rosenquist's first one-man exhibition in 1962 at the Green Gallery sold out. Three years later he made what has come to be considered one of his most important works, the 26-meter-long F-111. In 1968 he was given his first retrospective by the National Gallery of Canada.

Customer Reviews

Eye Candy for JR fans
No doubt about it, this is the best art book I own. As a HUGE fan of this artist, I may be slightly biased... but there are no doubts about the quality of this book - it is superbly bound and the quality of printing is just excellent. This book is definitely a good buy for any Rosenquist afficionado. Books on his paintings are hard to find so this one is undoubtebly a masterpiece. It is beautifully illustrated and excellently documented. There are not really any faults with this book. There are plenty of wonderful full page illustrations and some like F111 has a 4 page pull-out. I do believe you will not be disappointed - I highly recommend this book.

Great!
As a catalog of the Rosenquist Retrospective at the Guggenheim, this is probably, if not, the best and most comprehensive book on the work of James Rosenquist available. My sister purchased it for me even before the show opened (which reminds me, I'd better see the show this week, as it's ending soon!), and it has fully satiated me as a source of Rosenquist's work.

It's a very nicely bound, thick book which I find to be a very good deal in terms of the $65 (retail) price tag. The images are vivid and very finely reproduced in print. The majority of the pages are of Rosenquist's finished paintings from the 1950's up to the recent and refined work such as "Stowaway Peers Out at the Speed of Light". There are several foldouts, and yes, the large-scale Rosenquist classic "F-111" is one of them.

But my main interest in getting hold of this book were the inclusion of Rosenquist's magazine cut-out collage maquettes that his large paintings were derived from. They obviously represent his influence into the pop art movement and are a development from his early career as a sign painter. After this section are the various edition prints which the artist is also well-known for. At the end of the book is a nice biography/chronology with photos of Rosenquist with family, at openings, etc.

I highly recommend this book as a definate must for any Rosenquist admirer, or anyone into pop art.

best rosenquist book to have
if i were to ever own just one of rosenquist's books, this would be it. it is the most thorough, colorful pictures and good information. definatly worth every penny.