For Love 1965

James Rosenquist made this, "For Love" with screenprint, collage, and lithograph on paper, and right away, I'm struck by the way he layers images, like flipping through channels on an old TV. There's a real physicality to how Rosenquist uses color and texture. Look at that hand, for instance – one rendered in soft, gray tones, the other broken up by a field of dots. It's like he's deconstructing the very idea of an image, forcing us to see the world not as a seamless whole, but as a series of fragmented glimpses. The red pipe is a nod to Magritte. Rosenquist reminds me of other image-scavengers like Sigmar Polke, who also delighted in disrupting the smooth surfaces of consumer culture. Art’s not about answers but about opening up spaces for new questions, about embracing the messy, contradictory nature of experience.