Gripped by the death of screen icon Marilyn Monroe, James Rosenquist created a stylized, fragmented, and inverted portrait of Monroe interwoven and superimposed with disjointed parts of Marilyn’s name, image, and the trademark script of the Coca-Cola logo. By fragmenting Monroe’s image and combining her with another popular product, Rosenquist comments on how the late actress’s life and career had been co-opted and consumed by her superstar status.
In 1964, Rosenquist explained: “Painting is probably more exciting than advertising—so why shouldn’t it be done with that power and gusto, that impact? When I use a combination of fragments of things, the fragments or objects or real things are caustic to one another, and the title is also caustic to the fragments.”
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Coenties Slip
For a brief period in the 1950s and ’60s, an out-of-the-way street at the southeastern edge of Manhattan hosted a community of artists whose work there would change art history.
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