Pop: Bing-Bang Landscapes

Manhattan Art Dealer Leo Castelli is one of the biggest boosters of pop art. As if to confound critics who are proclaiming that the boom is already a bust, Castelli in the past fortnight has managed to sell the world’s largest pop painting, by James Rosenquist, and exhibited the world’s noisiest contempo rary sculpture, by Robert Rauschenberg. What do the two have to do with each other? To hear the artists tell it, both are simply expressions of today’s urban landscape.

58-Ft. Woodward. Rosenquist’s work, titled F-111, is 85 ft. long by 10 ft. high, or 13 ft. longer than its namesake, the U.S.A.F.’s new variable-winged jet fighter-bomber. The painting is made up of 51 panels, some aluminum, and uses a side view of the jet as a background for a grab bag of contemporary images in phosphorescent Dayglo colors—a Firestone tire, an umbrella superimposed on a nuclear mushroom cloud, giant light bulbs, a beaming six-year-old under the chrome busby of a hair dryer—all executed in Rosenquist’s precise realistic style.

Despite its size, F-111 is hardly a new departure for Rosenquist, 31, who started out as a billboard painter and feels that his early years gave him a unique outlook. He once did a 58-ft. by 20-ft. portrait of Actress Joanne Woodward for a Broadway signboard, and his view of women and the world has been Brobdingnagian ever since. Says Rosenquist of his work: “I’m interested in contemporary vision—the flicker of chrome, reflections, rapid associations, quick flashes of light. Bing-bang! Bing-bang! I don’t do anecdotes; I accumulate experiences.” F-111 is thus his own superbillboard illustration of modern industrial culture.

To prevent the painting from being sold piecemeal, Pop Art Collector Robert Scull bought F-111 for an extravagant $60,000. He will need a museum to show it. “I realize I bought a monster,” said Scull, “but the painting makes us look at our culture. Behind our prosperity is the ominous F-111.” Says Scull’s wife Ethel of her husband: “It’s great, but I think he’s mad.”

Junk on Wheels. Robert Rauschenberg, 39, has already established himself as a pop hero by exhibiting a stuffed goat, his own bed, and lumps of genuine Fulton Street dirt as art, and picked up the 1964 Venice Biennale’s International First Prize for painting with his silk-screen images taken from newsphotos. Last week at Castelli’s, Rauschenberg unveiled his latest kick—electronic sculpture. Titled Oracle, it is a series of five disconnected wagons of carefully put together junk, which Rauschenberg thinks of as “a collage out of sound.” The connecting links are auditory; four pieces tweet and woof, continuously tuning up and down the AM dial, through their own radio speakers. There is a fifth go-go cart with a control unit for the $6,000 worth of electronic equipment.

“Oracle is hardly a matter of fun and games,” insists Rauschenberg. “Through the use of materials—the old tub, car door, the window frame—I have represented a cross section of our culture. It’s our own New York landscape.” Neither the artist nor the gallery has decided on an asking price. “It’s quite an impractical piece,” admits Rauschenberg. “No one will buy that thing anyway,” said a gallery aide, but then they did not expect anyone to buy an 85-ft.-long painting either.