Outside Event 3

For my last outside event I visited the deYoung Museum. My purpose for visiting another time was to see the James Rosenquist is now on display. For this assignment I analysed the visual aspects of the piece and the techniques used in making this piece powerful and visually stunning.

At the de Young Museum in San Francisco hangs a James Rosenquist piece entitled Where The Water Goes (1989), from a series called Welcome To The Water Plant. The mixed media piece consists of colored pressed paper pulp and has lithographed collage elements. One of the most fascinating things about the piece is the large scale and use of paper pulp gives the piece great textural properties. Rosenquist uses the contrast of color to give depth to the piece. He uses this device to a great extent within the entire piece, giving it an almost three-dimensional feel about it.

            The most obvious quality that Rosenquist enlists is the use of line. The piece has several moving lines that point in many different locations. The top third of the piece is dominated by cutout and constructed images. Within the cutouts there is a faint image of two woman’s faces. The face on the left is more visible due to the wide smile, white teeth and ruby red lips, whereas the face on the right is merely a single eye and the corners of a mouth. The bright colors of the face cutouts are contrasted against the black and white background.

            In the very middle of the piece, one of the woman’s faces is overlapping onto a white porcelain-like image. The white porcelain area looks as if to be the bottom part of a standard urinal with water valve lines extending out from it on both sides. At the very bottom of the urinal, there is a water pipe that connects to the urinal. The pipes and vales are dark shades of grays and blacks, which contrast against the white of the urinal and the intense hues of the background. The color of the urinal and pipes are also contrasted against the dark bluish-green and bright pink hues of the background paper pulp. The use of contrasting color visually brings the urinal and pipes into the front dimension of the piece while pushing the paper pulp into the background even further, creating a space-like quality.

            At the very bottom of the piece lies a shell-like image. The bright pink background behind the shell gives the illusion of great depth between the shell and the background. Also, just above the shell and slightly to the right is another cutout image of an eye. The eye does not seem to be human and it looks as if it could be an animal’s eye. In terms of placement, the eye is laid on top of the right water valve, which pushes this eye to the very front of the painting. There seems to be a priority about the piece by placing the human image on top register and the animal eye and shell at the bottom.

            Rosenquist enlists several devices to create a space that is both apparent, by use of the title, and also allowed to be interpreted. Rosenquist sets a magical space by the use of images, color, and placement, that gives the large scale image a powerful affect.