The Friction Disappears

Object Details

Artist

James Rosenquist, born Grand Forks, ND 1933-died New York City 2017

Gallery Label

Rosenquist got his art training on the job, painting billboards in Minnesota and New York City, where he had to make food "delicious" and cigarettes "smokable." The Friction Disappears represents the effortless flow of pictures and information in our culture, where unrelated or contradictory ideas overlap one another. Rosenquist painted the car in the same hot hue as the canned spaghetti simply because he liked the color. The tiny electrons orbiting the globe on the car door are like the paths of ideas and images crisscrossing in the modern world. Rosenquist compares the uncanny combinations that result to "two soap bubbles colliding and coming together instead of destroying each other."Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006

Credit Line

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Container Corporation of America

1965

Object number

1984.124.254

Restrictions & Rights

Usage conditions apply

Type

Painting

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

48 1/8 x 44 1/4 in. (122.2 x 112.4 cm.) irregular

See more items in

Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection

Department

Painting and Sculpture

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Topic

Architecture\vehicle\automobile

Object\other\sign

Object\foodstuff\spaghetti

Record ID

saam_1984.124.254

Metadata Usage (text)

Not determined

GUID (Link to Original Record)

http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/vk73d2dc3da-b6fa-4232-abfd-d0fee619426a