Adcock, Craig — James Rosenquist: Monochromes

New York, Acquavella Contemporary Art, 2005. Paperback. BW pictorial wraps. 64 pp. 24+ color and bw plates, including one gatefold. Includes a checklist of illustrations. “James Rosenquist – Monochromes” highlights a theme that Rosenquist has explored throughout his phenomenal four-decade career but which has never before been presented either for exhibition or critical study despite countless museum and gallery shows worldwide. From the Fifties style newspaper advertising imagery that brought Rosenquist to early fame (“Pushbutton”, 1961) to his later encyclopedic panoramas of political, ecological and galactic discourse (“Time Dust-Black Hole” 1992) many of the most powerful paintings have been essentially black and white and shades of grey. This exhibition unites three pairs of paintings that are all owned separately including Rosenquist’s two portraits of Bo Diddley and the mechanized diptychs “Red Applause” and “Yellow Applause”. In the catalogue accompanying this exhibition Craig Adcock’s penetrating essay “The Sweet Cheat Gone” relates Rosenquist’s oblique, fragmentary and memory-laden paintings to Marcel Proust’s narratives of image distorted by emotion. VG (Appears unread) .