James Rosenquist: A Retrospective

James Rosenquist: A Retrospective by Fine, Ruth. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780892072675.

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 artists work since 1972, will give long-overdue, in-depth attention to Rosenquists singular achievement in American art. Extensive illustrations cover major works in diverse media, including work on paper that reveals the artists 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 artists career; Julia Blaut considers the artists source collages in the context of 20th-century collage; Ruth E. Fine addresses Rosenquists prints; art collector and former aeronautics researcher Eugene E. Epstein relates the artists work to scientific phenomena. Also included are a definitive biography, exhibition history and illustrated chronology.