Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
James Rosenquist
American; 20th-century
Ottawa, Canada: National Gallery of Canada
82%
Painting for the American Negro. 1962-1963. Oil on canvas
Rosenquist's faux-airbrush technique for oil painting appears at first as something of an aesthetic liability. The question is begged: why, given the equivocal relationship its pigments have with the surface they're pigmenting, is this a painting at all, rather than a collage by some other means? The huge size of the piece is not an adequate answer. What is, however, is its triptych format, which helps regularize the erratic rhythms of the many layers of pictorial information while also, just slightly, turning the artwork into an object. The seams between the three canvases are garnished with little mounds of paint. By proxy, this added bit of dimensionality activates the alien and superficial surfaces of the actual image-portions of the painting, without, however, making them seem any more lively or inviting: in a word, it turns the painting critical. How do these mechanics relate to the political "content" of the artwork? Ambigiously, to its credit. To "read" this painting would be foolhardy, although at times it tempts you to do so. It is a document or an homage much more than it is a statement. (TFS, 2025)