598
G. R.
SWENSON
cake. The flags also mean flaming candles, like on a birthday cake,
of age and time, and flags being planted and staking out areas in
life, like food, being eaten for energy. Actually the F-l11, the plane
itself, could be a giant birthday cake lying on a truck for a parade
or something-it has even been used like that- but it was developed
as a horrible killer.
SWENSON:
And the tire?
ROSENQUIST:
The tire is a crown, a celebration of the town and country
winter tire. The design, magnified, appears regal. I'd never thought
of what rubber tires or wheels meant to me, and I looked at the
tire tread and it seemed very strong and cruel or at least very, very
visual. It also looked like it was rising up, like a crown, and so I used
the image on top of the cake that way. And of course the two images
have similar shapes.
SWENSON:
And those three light bulbs?
ROSENQUIST:
Yes, in pink, yellow and blue, which are the three basic
colors of the spectrum. In that area of the picture they allowed
me to try experiments
in
color and scale that I could not have tried
in another painting in a smaller size. That huge area allowed me
to
paint with regular artist's oil paint, the pink-grey and yellow-grey
and blue-grey, on top of a fluorescent background. The dark
red
fluorescent paint appears to be lighter than the three light bulbs but
the paint in the three light bulbs lets you get the idea that the bulbs
are glowing, but not that they are turned on. It seemed
to
be
like
force against force.
The broken one is not broken the way a light bulb would break,
but more like an egg would crack.
The spaghetti just on the right, with the fork, has been painted
orange with artist's oil color; then a transparent fluorescent dark
red
color has been spread on top of the whole area, to give
it
a general
tone change, like a glaze.
SWENSON:
The girl under the hairdryer?
ROSENQUIST:
In the gallery she seemed very crucial; everyone looked
at her because they faced her when they went into the room.
Here at the Jewish museum it isn't so prominent and I like it
better. I thought of taking the face out many times, but then the
whole painting would be closer to what is historically the look of
abstract painting. I didn't think the face related
to
earlier painting.
The little girl is
the
female form in the picture. It is like someone
having her hair dried out on the lawn, in Texas or Long Island.
