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SOHO NEWS
22             
Thursday, October 9, 1975

Pop's Second Coming

MONA DA VINCI

JAMES ROSENQUIST (Leo Castelli Gallery, 4 East 77th St., through Oct. 18): Probably the less said in or about Pop Art, the better. James Rosenquist's new "drawings" hardly show us anything we haven't seen or heard a thousand times before from one source or another. The drawings are done on rectangular sheets of white paper, framed behind reflective plexiglass surfaces. If a drawing fails to hold your attention, you can at least observe the movements of the people behind you in the gallery. Incorporating paint and collage, Rosenquist's basic repertoire of primary colors provide arrayals of spirals and solar flares bursting from sun-shapes with a spattering of Pollock thrown in for effect.

Rosenquist's political drawings are loaded with sentiment, a sort of Pop-politics indulging in cliche, ex post facto associations that are stale as yesterday's papers. One drawing attempts to immortalize John F. Kennedy by using memento mori reminders of his assassination. On the left, a triangular, cropped section of the American flag in grays and black, is bordered with black crepe fabric. The center has a puddle of diluted black paint resembling chiffon, with small hole punched through the paper. These are obviously references to Jackie's widow's veils and the bullet shot, but uniting them like this smacks of a certain ambivalence in Rosenquist's meaning. The immortalization effort takes place on the right with a stenciled back-half of a Pegasus merging into the shape of J.F.K.'s famous rocking chair. Done in 1975, the work lacks the relevancy it might have had if Rosenquist made this kind of statement ten years ago.

Most of the drawings use a tripartite composition that is symmetrically balanced, rather than a serial arrangement. Large, folded paper egg shapes are placed on a central axis line drawn down the middle of the paper, balanced on either side by enlarged, overlapping paper-clip forms. As a visual metaphor, Rosenquist seems to be making signs that hint he's taking a more nuclear or cosmic, astronautical world-view.

In "Wind and Lightning," we're treated to a bit of chinoiserie. A page from the Wall Street Journal collaged onto the drawing says, "a Red thrust/a real threat." A bolt of lightning splits apart a spray-painted, folded paper circle, a ladder shape is diagonally painted over the newspaper, and a bright red, Chinese calligraphic symbol that Alloway would possibly find significant, sum up the overly simplistic associations Rosenquist again makes about complicated issues.

Pop Art advertises itself and nothing more. As signed art, former billboard painters like Rosenquist could finally gain personal fame and fortune by selling "here today, gone tomorrow" messages transcribed for te art-buying public. Such a totally extroverted art depends for its success on the surface pitch aimed at the impulse buyer looking for instant satisfaction, not lasting meaning or values. There's nothing wrong with this necessarily. I just enjoyed the experience of seeing what caught my eye in Rosenquist's new drawings, because that's the whole point of any spontaneous, impulsive moment. One either shrinks back to stop and think the matter over before deciding whether it's a good thing, or grabs the opportunity in the moment for whatever it's worth. I'm glad I chose the latter, since at the new Rosenquist show, that's the most obvious thing to do.