Art Museum presents gallery

The IU Art Museum opens its doors today to the bright, eclectic pop art of James Rosenquist.

The six prints will be on display and available for public viewing as an addition to the museum’s first-floor permanent collection gallery, Curator of Works on Paper Nan Brewer said.

The installation in the gallery will be on display from Oct. 29 to May 4, 2014.

The name of the installation is “High Technology and Mysticism: A Meeting Point,” and the art lends itself to IU’s fall “Themester” subject, “Connectedness: Networks in a Complex World.”

This, Brewer said, is why she specifically chose these pieces for this point in time.

Brewer chose which prints to display. The art museum had seven total, but because of their size and much to her dismay, she could only make room for six.

Brewer describes the pieces as a “visual intersection” between images of nature, media and science.

Rosenquist, who was born in 1933, was a contemporary of other pop artists like Andy Warhol, and he boasts a similar style in his work today.

He utilizes overlapping images of contrasting ideas and incorporating
typography into his artwork, as well.

Rosenquist worked as a billboard designer early in his career, Brewer said, and she thinks that influenced him as far as the wordplay in his pieces goes.

“They’re all so complex,” she said. “The words kind of just give you a reference of what to think about.”

She added that the pieces were extremely thought provoking and evocative.

“They make you draw your own connections and make you think about more universal questions that have come out of the really modern era,” Brewer said.

She described the pieces as the intersection of two periods.

“It’s right at the cusp of the end of the hippie era and the beginning of the tech generation,” she said.

This is why she feels that students will be interested, she said. 

“It’s a later work by a very important pop artist,” she said, “And I hope it would be some subject matter they would relate to since they are among the first generations to be born and reared in the digital revolution.

“I would hope it would really speak to some of the experiences of their
generation.”

Follow reporter Anicka Slachta on Twitter @ajslachta.