English
Perhaps the name of James Rosenquist is not as popular as other Pop artists of international fame, yet you can not underestimate his importance and contribution to a movement that forever revolutionized art, advertising and communication.
Rosenquist was born on November 29, 1933 in North Dakota and as an adolescent had contact with the art world by winning a scholarship to the Minneapolis School of Art, this was followed by the University of Minnesota and eventually he won a scholarship to the Arts Student League in New York where he established his first workshop.
During the early years, James Rosenquist made a living as a graphic designer and a sign painter until the development of a personal pictorial language began to form and placed him among groups of Pop Art that were begining to emerge. Rosenquist´s paintings use the language of advertising, pop culture and consumerism to become a series of overlapping juxtaposed images of a deformed speech and awe about life itself. Thus even the most banal, everyday objects become an unrecognizable abstract form that surprise viewers who can not help stopping in front of his colorful explosive works, shapes and textures.
In a turbulent and troubled times for the United States, as were the 60´s due to the bloody Vietnam War, James Rosenquist, inspired by the large murals of water lilies by Monet began to paint a mural that consisted of 23 panels (26 meters long) called F-111 and that will be exhibited at the Museum of Art in New York until July 30, 2012.
The mural whose title refers to the bombers that were used during the Vietnam War is a tough and colorful criticism of a society that is lost in its stupidity and frivolity. The F-111 were, at their moment, the most modern and powerful military aircraft and for this reason Rosenquist elected them to be in his mural. In this gigantic work, the artist creates a visual metaphor between a typical young man who enjoys a session in a hairdresser and a plane that destroys society as well as advertising and consumerism. The hair dryer that surrounds the head of the client is the tip of the nose of the plane that destroyed Vietnam.
The F-111 mural was first exposed at the Castellli Gallery in Manhattan in 1965, now will be at one of the most important museums of the world and it will shout out its message to all visitors who pass through there.
So if you want to know more about this work and many of the greatest works of modern art be sure to rent apartments in New york it will not fail to surprise you because in this cosmopolitan city, art lives on every corner
