I Love You with My Ford

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The Museum of Modern Art Stockholm (Sweden).

One of the first monumental works of James Rosenquist, demonstrating the main characteristics of his style. The canvas consists of three horizontal parts, in which utterly unsuitable for each other in meaning things are connected in a surreal way. The topmost part depicts a car. Tough and brilliant, it evokes associations with masculine power, while the face of a beautiful woman, shown close-up in the middle of the canvas, evokes thoughts of love and sexuality. The most contrasting is the lower part, on which ordinary pasta with tomato sauce is realistically drawn. Such a combination, unusual for painting, symbolizes life itself, its surprises and contrasts, where love is adjacent to such commonplace things as an ordinary everyday food.