The University of Kansas

James Rosenquist

United States, born 1933
1, 2, 3, Outside, 1963
Oil on canvas with wood and wire
Gene Swenson Memorial Collection, 70.145

Though ‘conceptual art’ traditionally refers to art that generates imagined or intellectual, rather than visual content, here we are applying the term to a wide range of movements concerned with ideas. One of these, Pop Art, reconsiders what are appropriate subjects for painting and sculpture. Drawing from images of the consumer culture that came to dominate the United States beginning in the 1950s, Pop Art return recognizable images to art, challenging the viewer to consider these as contemporary art subjects. By depicting a new category of common objects, Pop artists reevaluate the association between life and art.

The subjects for James Rosenquist’s works are popular images of contemporary urban life. Rosenquist worked as a billboard painter, an experience that affected the scale of his works, which often incorporate fragments of larger "billboard" images. In his paintings, which refer to common objects, Rosenquist often explores an object’s sensual qualities. In 1,2,3, Outside, he contrasts shiny surfaces, one soft and one hard, in the slick style of commercial advertising. By using identifiable subjects extracted from popular images, Rosenquist may be celebrating or criticizing popular culture. As in all art, the viewer plays a role in deciding what the artist is saying.