Volunteer

James Rosenquist’s paintings have a distinctive collage-like appearance and feature symbols of post-war American life drawn from mass media. In Volunteer, he depicted a washing machine, an ice-cream cone, and a person in a business suit, referencing technological progress, indulgence, and conformity. The large blue handprint centered in the composition—an enlargement of the artist’s own handprint—represents the uncertain role of the individual in the rapidly changing world of the 1960s. On the preparatory sketch for this work, Rosenquist wrote: “The volunteer who is puzzled doesn’t know what to do but willing.”