Viewing page 5 of 69

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

people go to and from their jobs. I never felt that I was wasting time. It felt great to be free of a routine job.
Then, suddenly, it seemed as though ideas came floating in to me through the window. All I had to do was snatch them out of the air and begin painting. Everything seemed to fall into place - the idea, the composition, the imagery, the colors, everything began to work.

Within a few months, Rosenquist developed the style and imagery that have become so characteristic of his work. He recognized the power and validity of the style and felt that he had discovered the idiom that could express his most deeply felt reactions to the world around him. Whether the world would agree with his judgement remained to be seen.
This question was, however, to be answered sooner than Rosenquist ever dared hope. Although he did not know it at the time, Rosenquist's paintings were closely related to those of the other artists who were to be identified with the pop movement. Working alone and completely independently of the others, Rosenquist had developed a style out of his most personal experiences. His imagery derived from the ordinary and commonplace visual associations of the American landscape.
This concern with common images, occuring as it did among this group of artists, reflected a profound change in esthetic values. Rosenquist, along with the other artists in the group, was sensitive to this change, and his style represents an individual response to this new atmosphere. Like the others, Rosenquist stumbled on his imagery. His first paintings in the style were no more than experiments. He realized, however, that this particular imagery and style were right. It expressed something valid and important in the esthetic reality of the time.
His work came to the attention of Richard Bellamy, of the Green Gallery, who arranged Rosenquist's first one-man show, in February 1962. That exhibit was an immediate succes. It reinforced the growing awareness that a new artistic movement had developed. Rosenquist's bizarre imagery and poetic vision struck a responsive chord in some of 

91