Now I’m not the biggest pop art fan… not by a long shot. But I have to say that going back to our Paris HUB, F-111 is the finest airplane painting of the sixties and ergo sum: one of the finest paintings of the late 20th century. It was a thrill to get the opportunity to do James Rosenquist’s portrait. He’s not Rauchenberg, but damn is he close… and at times (if you consider politics and general beat to hippy pedagogy) better… and he talks like Laurie and Spalding try to talk, but he’s a real natural.


His voice is that of the greatest generation… (no irony) who really changed all, and we sing and suffer under these politics of WWII… but this guy could draw from the get go, and so we speak of the prodigy… but he was painting whiskey bottles and his dad and him were in love with airplanes… all he spoke of was family and planes (oh how I love that) and painting was a way to capture these intese memories of flight. It is no accident that F-111 is his masterpiece… but I beg you to realize how great that piece is… it is installation painting, pop, politics, grid minamalism, etc. way before the bastards.

I say this now to Allan Stone: somtimes your confidence will allow you to miss a great artist… that said, he doesn’t really paint well… it’s all commercial tricks… so… after D.K…. well… hard to groove on his bullshit, but he deploys bull shit with such reckless beat abandon… that it flies… it does fly.

Now it was the delightful and delicious and delovely M.P. who managed to get me in on a press pass to video her Art Actuel interview with the man. Between reading Jaques Boyreau’s novella and seeing Samo©’s show at BMA, I’m all about the old hipsters. Some how there is nothing quite as happy/sad as an old beat still drumming. Rosenquist was a treat beyond treats to listen too…. He’s also the only guy I ever heard give a good shout out to Allan Stone (I mean outside the gallery)… however, it was to say that Allan hated his work, but unlike my old man, that just pissed him off and made him go to Castelli and Ivan Karp and they were the only three back then. Rosenquist was at Coentese Slip, which I didn’t know. He’d probably be my favorite pop artist, if it weren’t for Lichtenstein and Warhol… but there he is still talking and still painting. God bless all old artists.



Pauillac label collage, ©ITIN ‘o4

Posted on Monday, April 11th, 2005 at 5:17 pm.
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