Eight months after James Rosenquist's death in March, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne is showing the American pop art icon's key works. Some of the paintings have never been displayed in Germany.
Image: DW/S. Oelze
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A James Rosenquist retrospective
Eight months after James Rosenquist's death, Museum Ludwig shows the American pop art icon's key works in Cologne. Some of the paintings have never been displayed in Germany.
Image: DW/S. Oelze
From sign painting to art
In 1959, James Rosenquist painted "Astor Victoria" — the name of a New York movie theater where he worked as a billboard painter. The background is done along the lines of Abstract Expressionism, a style popular back then. Rosenquist used leftover billboard paint for his artwork, and also used letters for the first time.
Image: DW/S. Oelze
Birthplace of pop art
Change and new beginnings were in the air in the early 1960s. James Rosenquist was part of a group of artists working on graphic art in studios at the very southernmost tip of Manhattan. They didn't turn to nature for inspiration, but instead painted the everyday objects that surrounded them. The art world was shocked by canvases showing ordinary, mundane objects.
James Rosenquist was politically active, protesting against the Vietnam War. His XXL paintings may have been inspired by advertisements, but he used his art to criticize politics. His larger-than-life formats and the glaring colors he used helped his message get heard.
Image: imago/ZUMA Press
Rosenquist's first pop art paintings
Rosenquist studied art in Minnesota from 1952 to 1954. In 1955 he took a few classes in New York with George Grosz, a German painter who had immigrated to the US in the 1930s. In 1961, Rosenquist completed his first pop artwork: "Zone," a close-up of a woman's face combined with a tomato, an oil painting in shades of grey. Tears glitter on the tomato's skin.
Image: DW/S. Oelze
President of pop
Rosenquist is quoted to have said that John F. Kennedy was a walking advertisement. His painting "President Elect," from 1960, unmasks the new US President's self-marketing by juxtaposing consumer products with a painting of a Kennedy campaign poster: a politician's empty promises?
Image: DW/S. Oelze
Inspired by ads
Life magazine was an important source of inspiration for Rosenquist. He turned this cigarette ad featuring Joan Crawford into a painting that obliterated the sales message, focusing on the actress and her contrived facial expression.
Image: DW/S. Oelze
Colorful horizons
In the 1970 installation "Horizon Home Sweet Home," Rosenquist set up vertical colored panels and used a dry ice fog on the ground. Visitors to the Cologne museum can also experience the legendary installation, wading through white vapors and mirrored in the metallic panels.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/O. Berg
Enormous size
This gigantic 1980 painting is entitled "Star Thief," and it's best viewed from a distance. Rosenquist used XXL formats to exhaust the limits of perception. From afar, these paintings are clear, razor sharp images, but seen close up, the images blur. The exhibition "James Rosenquist: Painting as Immersion" runs through March 4, 2018 at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.
Image: DW/S. Oelze
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James Rosenquist started out as a billboard painter, poised on scaffolds high above New York's Times Square and across the city. In the glitzy world of consumerism, he created huge ads for the latest Hollywood films showing in two New York movie theaters, as well as advertisements for cars and candy stores.
"I painted billboards above every candy store in Brooklyn," he wrote in his 2009 autobiography.
Still life
Rosenquist started off by creating small-scale models before blowing the paintings up to gigantic proportions — and he kept that penchant for XXL size artwork throughout his life.
He would often cut objects from ads in magazines — Life magazine was a favorite — and reassemble them, transferring the new combination to a large canvas.
Unlike his pop art colleagues, Rosenquist never squirted paint on canvas, nor did he use screens or strainers. He painted broad strokes on canvas with a brush, creating a strong dynamic of shape and color. He was interested in the peripheral view, in details and shapes that blow open a person's range of vision, where close-up detail becomes blurred.
Consumer objects, a fighter plane: Rosenquist began painting 'F 111' in the midst of the Vietnam WarImage: picture-alliance/dpa/O. Berg
Tribute to an icon
Rosenquist was born in North Dakota to a family that never had much money. Issues of survival and existential concerns, combined with political worries, are a common theme throughout all his work.
Key artworks are on display now in Cologne at the Museum Ludwig retrospective entitled "Painting as Immersion," which runs from November 18 to March 4, 2018.
How art becomes a commodity
From German Renaisssance to Pop Art, art and money have been closely linked for centuries. Their interplay is on the agenda at an exhibition with works by Albrecht Dürer and Gerhard Richter in Oberhausen.
Image: DW/K. Abel
From press photo to artwork
One of Andy Warhol's most famous paintings came shortly after the death of Marilyn Monroe; the sex symbol was the focus of the series. The interchangability of the images altered the way the original works were perceived. Art as mass merchandise was the goal of the Pop Art master. At the very least, it made for good advertising.
Image: DW/K. Abel
Art or commerce? Both!
Artist Keith Haring didn't even bother with the boundaries between art and commerce: His cartoon-like figures appeared on walls and billboards and the artist became famous for his street art.
Image: DW/K. Abel
A master of self-marketing
Albrecht Dürer was one of the first artists to turn his art into a business. He expanded his brand, sold his prints in a variety of versions and had his monogram copyrighted.
Image: picture alliance/akg-images
Sex sells
A 15th-century sculpture of the Madonna alongside a pin-up photograph of Marilyn Monroe. Opposites attract? Yes and no. Both representations are fitting with the beauty standards of their time and, as a result, sold well.
Image: DW/K. Abel
Brigitte Bardot and her mother
A great deal was made when the city of Oberhausen and state of North Rhine-Westphalia acquired Gerhard Richter's "Frau mit Mutter," depicting Brigitte Bardot and her mother, in 1984 for the museum. At the time, it cost just 28,000 D-Mark. Today, the value of the piece has multiplied. The note next to the work reads, "Money on canvas."
Image: DW/K. Abel
A provocative protest
The boldly provocative slogans of contemporary artist Laas Abendroth comment on the exhibits themselves in a manner that is at times ironic, inspiring onlookers to reflect on their messages.
Image: DW/K. Abel
Affordable postcards
Joseph Beuys wanted to ensure his art was made affordable to the average worker. As a result, he created postcards en masse and sold them for a low price (at least before they became collectors' items).
Image: DW/K. Abel
Art to-go
Visitors whose need to shop has been awakened at the exhibition can take a little something home with them. This inedible chocolate thaler by artist Christin Lahr titled "Have - Power - Guilt" is available for 49 euros (nearly $53).
Image: DW/K. Abel
A colorful offering
More than 300 works on art and commerce are on display at the Schloss Oberhausen through May 14, 2017. The subject is approached from a number of angles as the exhibition showcases just how differently artists address commodification. Pictured is a work by Gunhild Söhn.
Image: DW/K. Abel
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Rosenquist, the museum writes on its website, authorized the concept and the selection of the works: "This will be the first major museum exhibition as an homage to the artist."
The exhibition offers a wide-ranging overview over his work from the museum's own collection, loans from the Rosenquist estate, and from museums in the US, France and Sweden.
The show includes a veritable icon of the pop era: the impressive installation F-111.
The huge painting was created in 1964-65, during one of the most politically turbulent decades in recent US history.
Other displays document how the artist actually worked. Through painstaking research, museum staff found the magazine cake mix ad Rosenquist used as an element in the "President Elect" painting from the early 1960s (No. 5 in the gallery, above). Every one of the still life paintings is a comment on mass culture, as well as a political statement.
Click on the above gallery for an idea of what awaits visitors to the Museum Ludwig exhibition.
