James Rosenquist

Green Gallery, New York
Hanford Yang, New York
Parke Bernet Galleries, New York, November 18, 1970, lot 36
Dayton's Gallery 12, Minneapolis (acquired from the above)
William Leonard, Cincinnati
William Kistler, New York
Richard Feigen Gallery, Chicago
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1988

New York, Green Gallery, James Rosenquist, January - February 1962
Philadelphia, Arts Council Gallery, Y.W.H.A. Association, Modern Painting, 1963
Princeton, University Art Museum, American Art Since 1960, May 1970
Seattle, Seattle Art Museum Pavillion, American Art: Third Quarter Century, August – October 1973, cat. no. 56, p. 37, illustrated
Denver, Denver Art Museum; Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum; Des Moines, Des Moines Art Center; Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Washington, D.C., National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, James Rosenquist, May 1985– September 1986, p. 89, illustrated in color
Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery, Rosenquist: Moscow 1961 – 1990, February – March 1991, p. 50, illustrated in color
Valencia, IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez, Rosenquist, March – September 1991, cat. no. 14, p. 108, illustrated in color
New York, Gagosian Gallery, James Rosenquist: The Early Pictures, May - July 1992, p. 40, illustrated in color, p. 68, illustrated (study and source)
Montreal, Musée des Beaux Arts de Montreal, Pop Art, October 1992 - January 1993, cat. no. 157, fig. no. 23, p. 77, illustrated in color
London, Royal Academy of Arts; Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau, American Art in the Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture 1913 - 1993, May - December 1993, cat. no. 175, illustrated in color
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Under Development: Dreaming the MCA's Collection, April - August 1994
Houston, The Menil Collection and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Portland, Portland Art Museum; Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum; Wolfsburg, Kunstmuseum, James Rosenquist: Retrospective, May 2003 - January 2005, pl. 17, p. 81, illustrated in color

This painting is in good condition. Please contact the department for the condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. The canvas is framed in a wood strip frame. Please note that there are no symbols associated with this lot as incorrectly indicated in the catalogue.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

James Rosenquist sought to inspire viewers with the commonness of the everyday.  In In the Red, 1962, everyday objects are taken out of context and placed where they no longer have an overt function. The viewer is left to contemplate his or her personal experience with the perceived object and freely interpret its relationship to the unrelated objects juxtaposed with it in the painting.  The power of suggestion is something that Rosenquist mastered more thoroughly than any of his contemporaries. Without knowing it, the viewer is forced to confront, in very large, bright and real terms, the in-your face advertising of our consumer-obsessed society.  Rosenquist seeks to present the dichotomy between nature and society – and how far apart they have become.  Rosenquist combined his earlier skills as a billboard artist with his unique perspective in order to create a highly evocative, yet recognizable art.

In In the Red, it is not immediately obvious to the viewer that the large red area is actually a bowl of tomato soup (confirmed by the source image and study for this work).  The painting is further abstracted by the scale of the bowl particularly in comparison to the men's stockings and cropped figure.  The artist strips objects of their meaning in order to subject them to a more rigorous analysis, while also creating a visual overload that reflects the dynamism of the contemporary world and modern media. Rosenquist noted, "The essence of collage is to take very disparate imagery and put it together and the result becomes an idea, not so much a picture... The best thing is that they make sparks...in collage there is a glint...or reflection of modern life." (Exh. Cat., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, James Rosenquist: A Retrospective, 2003, p. 17)

Years of painting on larger-than-life billboard signs between 1954 and 1960 gave Rosenquist a visually rich vocabulary of commodity images from which he was able to draw upon in his own art.  In addition, other artists working around him, such as Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns were pulling ready-made images from the media and inserting them into their paintings. Rosenquist was not trying to be ironic about society, like other Pop artists. Although some of his paintings may appear to be a pun or satire, he was not trying to judge current culture.  Rosenquists' painterly and fluid compositions such as In the Red convey his passionate love of paint and create a visual language that taps into the iconography of modern life.