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mous material as their sources: in Lichtenstein's case it was long-used and unrevised graphic commercial art and in Dine's case it was tools and fittings that were common and efficient enough to be, in a quotidian way, timeless. Johns' ignoring of the expansion of the number of the states in his flag paintings is another example of prudent commonness preferred to risky topicality. Rosenquist's interest in temporal anonymity is analogous to this, a safeguard against being swamped by the "visual inflation," as Rosenquist called it, of the developed mass media. By 1964, however, he was confident of his ability to use contemporary imagery without the shield of the presumptive permanence. In Lanai the car is a new one, sleek, with a boxy look, and the peaches are as glorious as color reproductive processes can make them. The kneeling nude is, of course, a reference to the White Rock maiden and, it should be noted, in her new pose, with knees together. She kneels however in a new context, on the edge of a swimming pool. The tubular railing rises inward from lower right as a spoon scoops up a peach from the upper left. The transitions between sections, both the interpenetrations and the jumps, are smoothly managed, very different from the abrupt style of the earlier pieces. Rosenquist is one of the few American artists of the '60s to annex images from high style Pop culture. The inverted automobile (the painting is upside down in the catalogue) holds the gloss of an as on coated paper for all its violent recontextualization. Food, machine, and human image- it is another version of President Elect but rendered now with a glittering lyricism rather than a hard-selling directness. That Rosenquist was conscious of these stylistic differences seems clear from the fact that in the same year he made a bunch of schematic works that derive from low sources in Pop culture. These are Win a New House This Christmas (Contest), Be Beautiful, and Untitled (Joan Crawford Says).
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James Rosenquist, The Lines Were Etched Deeply on Her Face, o/c, 66" x 78", 1962. (Collection: Mr. and Mrs. Robert Scull.)