F-111, James Rosenquist

Artwork Overview

James Rosenquist, F-111
James Rosenquist, F-111
James Rosenquist
F-111
1965
James Rosenquist, artist
1933–2017
F-111, 1965
Where object was made: United States
Material/technique: color lithograph
Dimensions:
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 686 x 546 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 27 x 21 1/2 in
Frame Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 36 1/4 x 28 1/4 x 1 1/4 in
Weight (Weight): 9 lbs
Credit line: Gift from the Gene Swenson Collection
Accession number: 1970.0189
Not on display
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Images

Label texts

Exhibition Label:
"Views of Vietnam," Oct-2006, Steve Goddard
Rosenquist combines the insignia of the United States Air Force with pictorial passages that are readily associated with advertising, innocence and middle-class America. In so doing, he suggests a seamless connection between mainstream America and the widely televised details of the Vietnam War. The star in the insignia, however, shifts from white, associated with the United States, to red, associated with communist governments such as that of North Vietnam. This lithograph is a somewhat compressed variation of Rosenquist’s billboard-sized painting, F-111 (10 x 86 feet), also done in 1965. The artist described the painting in terms of the “power and pressure of the other side of our society.”

Exhibition Label:
"Conflicting Memories," Oct-2003, Steve Goddard
Rosenquist layers images that we associate with advertising, innocence and middle-class America with images emblematic of the Vietnam War. In so doing, he suggests a seamless connection between mainstream America and the widely televised military realities of the day. Seven years after this print was made the artist was arrested in an anti-war protest in Washington, DC.

Exhibitions

Views of Vietnam
Stephen Goddard, curator
2006
Conflicting Memories
Stephen Goddard, curator
Saralyn Reece Hardy, curator
2003–2004
Conflicting Memories
Stephen Goddard, curator
Saralyn Reece Hardy, curator
2004
Decade of Transformation: American Art of the 1960s
David Cateforis, curator
1999
Gene Swenson: Retrospective for a Critic
1971
Brosseau Center for Learning: Pop! Goes the Spencer
David Cateforis, curator
2025

Resources

Audio

Didactic – Art Minute
Didactic – Art Minute
Episode 226 Jul-2010, Natalie Svacina I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Pop artist James Rosenquist removes, isolates, and juxtaposes images from advertisements and popular culture, often to construct social commentaries. His early career as a billboard painter gave him the skills to transform polished commercial images into artworks rendered by hand. His 1965 lithograph, F-111, named after the fighter jet then being developed, features a black and white image of a young, smiling, blonde girl under a warhead-shaped hair dryer. Overlaying these images is the logo of the United States Air Force in a blue and peach color scheme. A floral pattern, inspired by a wallpaper design, weaves throughout the composition while a light bulb and a broken eggshell occupy the lower right. These combinations conflate symbols of material society and war to critique American consumerist excess in the midst of the Vietnam conflict. The print reuses and rearranges elements from Rosenquist’s room sized painting of the same period, also titled F-111. With thanks to Natalie Svacina for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.