F- I I I
599
Painting the
grass
in
Day-Glo green colors
is
like the change of nature
in
relation to the new look of the landscape.
SWENSON:
Next there is an umbrella superimposed oVer an atom bomb
blast.
Is
that about fallout?
ROSENQUIST:
I suppose the umbrella could be something about fallout,
, but for me it's like someone raising his umbrella or raising his window
in
the morning, looking out the window and seeing a bright
red
and
yellow atomic bomb blast, something like a cherry blossom, a beautiful
view of an atomic blast.
When I was working in Times Square and painting signboards
the workmen joked around and said the super center of the atomic
target was around Canal Street and Broadway. That's where the
rockets were aimed from Russia; and these guys, the old-timers would
say, "Well, I'm not worried. At least we'll have a nice view right
up here against the wall."
To me it's now a generation removed, the post-Beat young people.
They're not afraid of an atomic war and think that sort of attitude
is
passe, that it won't occur. The Beat people, like Kerouac and
Robert Frank, Dick Bellamy, Ginsberg and Corso, their first sensibility
was of it being used immediately and they were hit by the idea of it,
they were shocked and sort of threatened. Now the younger people
are blase and don't think it can happen. So this is a restatement of
that Beat idea, but in full color.
The umbrella is friendlier than having
to
do with fallout. It's
an aperture for a view. The rod holding up the umbrella goes right
down the middle of the explosion like something being saved, the
center of something else at the same time. The umbrella is realistic,
it's a realistic vision, with frost or snow on top of it. The blue in the
umbrella is its own color, not a Surrealistic piece of sky. It's a beach
umbrella that was left up
in
the winter.
Then next, that's an underwater swimmer wearing a helmet with
an air bubble above his head, an exhaust air bubble that's related to
the breath of the atomic bomb. His "gulp!" of breath is like the
"gulp!" of the explosion. It's an unnatural force, man-made.
I heard a story that when a huge number of bombers hit in
Vietnam, and burned up many square miles of forest, then the
exhaust of the heat and air pressure of the fire created an artificial
storm and it started raining and helped put the fire out. The natives
thought that something must
be
on their side; they thought it was a
natural rain that put the fire out but it was actually a man-made
change in the atmosphere.
