1, 2, 3 Outside, James Rosenquist

Episode 36. I’m David Cateforis with another art minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. “1, 2, 3 Outside” is the title of a 1963 painting in the Spencer collection by the American Pop artist James Rosenquist. Like other Pop artists such as Andy Warhol, Rosenquist derived his subject matter from preexisting advertising images. Drawing on his professional experience as a billboard painter, he depicted his subjects on a large scale and fragmented them, so that they seem like something glimpsed rapidly. “1,2,3 Outside” consists of three sections. The bottom panel shows a segment of a fashion model’s white satin dress, rendered in a palette of red and white. The panel above bears the cropped, elevated view of the right front side of an automobile, rendered in blue and white. The red, white, and blue palette of these panels suggests that dresses and cars are typically American consumer items. Above the automobile are two silver-painted wooden posts along the picture’s sides, with a wire strung between them. These real elements heighten our awareness of the distance separating the everyday world from the glamorous illusions of both art and advertising, normally separate realms that Rosenquist merges seamlessly in his painting. From the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.