F-I 1 1
601
is
to shift gears,
to
get to an area where an artist can be an effect.
To get to another strata-anti-style oould
be
a lever.
SWENSON:
You once said to me that in your paintings you were trying
to get at a quality; even more mysterious than death.
ROSENQUIST:
Yes. What I meant was that ideas can have more of a
, mysterious effect than someone simply being eradicated. The effect on
someone, the reality of something, can be more horrible and more
mysterious than someone being totally destroyed. Having every memory
obliterated-that can be more horrible than being shot.
SWENSON:
But you're not saying that you are anti-machine because you
are anti-style, or are you?
ROSENQUIST:
Machines are exciting. I'm not anti-machine, but some
machines seemingly can't be dealt with, th'ey're so sophisticated. I feel
we can
be
tripped up by the need
to
make a new ethic, instead of
being very careful. W'e think we have solved something with the
machine and actually we've tripped up human nature.
SWENSON:
You were also quoted as saying that you were involved with
the United States and the position of a p'erson trying to be an
artist. Were you suggesting by this that people ought to learn painting
rather than how to run IBM machines or make F-111s?
ROSENQUIST:
No. I'm amazed by-when I think of technology, I think
of
it
being fantastic. I
would
want them to stop making F-111s because
it's a war industry; but I wouldn't try to get a technologist to become
an artist.
SWENSON:
You don't see any war between technology and art?
ROSENQUIST:
No. I see a closer tie with technology and art and a
new curiosity about new methods of communication coming from
all sides. The present position of an artist seems to be a person who
offers up a gift, an antidote to something, a small relief to a heavy
atmosphere. A person looking at it may say, "That's beautiful, amaz–
ing, fantastic, a nice thing." Artists seem to offer up their things with
very much humility and graciousness while society now and the
economy seem to be very rambunctious. Th'e stance of the artists now,
compared with the world and the ideas in society, does not seem to
equate; they don't relate 'except as an artist offering up something
as a small gift. So the idea of this picture was to do an extravagance,
something that wouldn't simply be offered as a relief.
