Time Stops the Face Continues 2008

James Rosenquist made this painting, Time Stops the Face Continues, at an unknown date, probably using oil on canvas. Rosenquist was a master of layering images, and here it feels like he’s riffing on time itself, looping together these fragmented images. Look at how the pencils stand upright, organized and regimented, only to bleed into the scribbled lines on the right side of the canvas. The clock, a circle made up of all different colors, shows the artifice of time, the way we break it down into these arbitrary segments. The brushwork is loose, almost like a sketch, but the hard edges in other places keeps it grounded. You can sense a real physicality in the way the paint is applied; thin washes that let the canvas breathe, interrupted by these bold, graphic marks. I see in this work an early premonition of artists like Gerhard Richter, who would go on to explore similar themes of history, memory, and representation. For Rosenquist, like so many great painters, the meaning isn't fixed, but always in motion.