Artist who made new images from generic
NEW YORK — Artist James Rosenquist, a key figure in the pop art movement, has died. He was 83.
Rosenquist’s wife, Mimi Thompson, told The New York Times that he died Friday in New York City after a long illness.
Rosenquist started by painting signs and billboard advertisements in Times Square and other public places. He later incorporated images from popular culture, from celebrities to consumer goods, into his work.
One of his best-known pieces is “President Elect,” created in the early 1960s. It is a billboard-style painting depicting John F. Kennedy’s face alongside a yellow car and a piece of cake. “The face was from Kennedy’s campaign poster. I was very interested at that time in people who advertised themselves,” Rosenquist told the art appreciation organization The Art Story.
Also popular was “F-111,” which superimposes a Vietnam War fighter-bomber on images of children and consumer goods.
Rosenquist resisted comparisons to his contemporaries Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. “I’m not like Andy Warhol. He did CocaCola bottles and Brillo pads. I used generic imagery — no brand names — to make a new kind of picture,” he said in a 2007 interview with Smithsonian magazine.
Rosenquist was born in Grand Forks, N.D. He attended the University of Minnesota before moving to New York City in 1955.
A fire destroyed several works by Rosenquist at his home and studio in Aripeka, Fla., in 2009. It was the same year he released his autobiography, “Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art,” written with David Dalton.