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James Rosenquist
Swimmer in the Econo-mist
March 07 - June 14, 1998
From March 7 through June 14, the Deutsche Guggenheim will introduce a major new work - The Swimmer in the Econo-mist (1997-98) - by American artist James Rosenquist. This monumental, three-painting suite was made specifically for the exhibition space at Unter den Linden. It will be presented along with preliminary studies.
The Swimmer in the Econo-mist is the first in what Deutsche Bank and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation have conceived as an on-going series of site-specific commissions by prominent and emerging contemporary artists. It is the second exhibition held at the Deutsche Guggenheim; the exhibition program was launched in November 1997 with Visions of Paris: Robert Delaunay's Series.
Rosenquist was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1933. After studying at the University of Minnesota, Rosenquist came to New York in 1955 on a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York. There his teachers included the German painter and graphic artist, George Grosz. At the time, Abstract Expressionism still dominated the art world. Rosenquist made abstract canvases while supporting himself by painting commercial billboards over Times Square. By the time of his first solo exhibition at the Green Gallery in 1962, he had become associated with Pop art because he was using subjects, techniques, and a palette derived from advertising. Fundamentally, however, his work remained rooted in abstraction: though he painted realistic images, such as canned spaghetti, cars, and cover girls, they were fragmented, simulating the viewpoint of a billboard painter on a scaffold, for whom only portions of an overall image are visible at one time. Rosenquist also began to work on canvases on a monumental, billboard scale.
His famous painting, F-111 (1964-65), at the time the largest Pop painting ever made, is more than twenty-six meters long and filled all four walls of the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. Since the F-111 traveled throughout Europe from October 1965 through 1967, Rosenquist has been well known to German audiences. His work has been shown in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions throughout the country, including a retrospective at the Wallraf-Richartz Museums in Cologne in 1972.
This exhibition is organized by Robert Rosenblum, Curator of Twentieth-Century Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Professor of Modern European Painting at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Rosenblum has described The Swimmer in the Econo-mist as: "a time capsule of twentieth-century history.
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It's got the epic momentum of the past, and it also has some sense of bursting through a sound barrier into the future. But, above all, it's got the panoramic sweep that sums up our planet, the cosmos, and whatever you can buy in the five-and-dime store. It goes from heaven to hell and from the particular to the universal."
The subjects of The Swimmer in the Econo-mist are industry and consumerism, and the turbulent nature of the economy as a whole. The paintings also refer to the wars that have shaped this century, as the images drawn from F-111 and Picasso's Guernica suggest. The paintings's swirling vortices are a visual metaphor for unrest: passing from black-and-white to vivid color, from abstraction to glimpses of realism, from the mundane to the extraterrestrial, they hurtle across the large canvases toward the far end of the gallery, where they come to a halt. Here, on a canvas shaped like an upside-down altarpiece, the German flag emerges like a sunrise.
The exhibition is accompanied by a 56-page, fully illustrated catalogue that includes an interview with the artist by Rosenblum and an essay by preeminent Rosenquist scholar Judith Goldman. To enhance the public's understanding of Rosenquist's prolific body of work, The Deutsche Guggenheim will also feature a lunch-time lecture series, guided tours of the exhibition and of Pop art in Berlin, and a film series on the artist and his peers. Included will be the premiere showing of "James Rosenquist: The Swimmer in the Econo-mist," a Guggenheim Museum Production directed and produced by Ultan Guilfoyle. This 25-minute documentary was filmed on location at the artist's studio in Aripeka, Florida, during the final stages of his work on this commission.
An exclusive limited-edition product will be produced to commemorate the opening of each exhibition held at the Deutsche Guggenheim. As part of our second exhibition, Deutsche Guggenheim in cooperation with Hugo Boss will recreate James Rosenquist's famous paper suit that he wore to Pop art openings and parties in the 1960s. Rosenquist in his paper suit transcended mere fashion and became the perfect embodiment of the era. Now made of Tyvek(r), a super-durable material manufactured by DuPont, this new, limited-edition design for sale exclusively at the Deutsche Guggenheim will bring Rosenquist's paper suit into the new millenium.
Images of the exhibition
are available online at www.photo-files.de/guggenheim in a 300 dpi quality.
Further information at
Manager: Svenja Gräfin von Reichenbach
Press: Sara Bernshausen
Phone: +49-30-202093-14
Fax: +49-30-202093-20
email: berlin.guggenheim@db.com
Internet: www.deutsche-guggenheim.de
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