Andy
St. Cloud Tech

Mixed Media Comparison
Ten artists were commissioned to paint murals for the New York State Exhibition building at The World's Fair in 1964. The youngest of these ten was James Rosenquist. His mural entitled "Wam" was a blend of various symbolic images that were meant to bombard the audience. His painting contained images such as World's Fair peanuts, the Moon, Uncle Sam's hat, a spoon, a soda, and a car. Each image was supposed to be familiar to the audience, and create a feeling of nostalgia. It was Rosenquist's attempt to have the audience focus on the mural as a whole rather than just on each individual image. In the middle of the mural you can faintly make out the words of Atwater MN, Rosenquist's home town. This was a personal touch that Rosenquist included just for himself. I think Rosenquist did an excellent job on the mural, it communicates a unique blend of images to the audience.

My art class was recently asked to complete an art project that summarized our generation. I thought using a mixed media approach would best complete this task. I took topics like fashion, technology, music, war , and drugs to illustrate what I thought our generation was like. For each topic I used images that I thought the audience could identify with. I included things like an American and Iraqi flag, sketches of popular musicians, kids wearing baggy pants and sweatshirts, a compact disc, and a drug dealer cornering our youth in a dark alley. I used a lot of cut paper and acrylic paint for the project. I tried blending a cartoon and realistic style of drawing and I think it worked out pretty well. I saw many similarities between my work and that of James Rosenquist. We both took a mixed media approach to define a large subject. Both pieces of artwork used a variety of images that make one single statement to the audience. I tried to make a personal statement in my artwork just as Rosenquist did, I used my own personal cartoons that I have developed over the years. I found that doing that made the artwork very special to me. I hope to do more mixed media works in the future, they allow the artist to make a bold statement with an abundance of images.



I have chosen this work because I found that the style was similar to one of my own works. The colors and shading are also very well done.

I have chosen to respond to this work by writing a short comparison of Roenquist's mural and one of my own.