{"data":{"id":"244","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":244,"topgoose_id":5272,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":244,"title":"Broome Street Trucks After Herman Melville","display_artist_text":"James Rosenquist","display_date":"1963","accession_number":"64.20","dimensions":"Overall: 72 1/8 × 72 1/8 × 3 3/8 in. (183.2 × 183.2 × 8.6 cm)","medium":"Oil on linen","department":"collection","classification":"Paintings","credit_line":"Purchase","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eJames Rosenquist, \u003cem\u003eBroome Street Trucks After Herman Melville\u003c/em\u003e, 1963. Oil on linen, overall: 72 1/8 × 72 1/8 × 3 3/8 in. (183.2 × 183.2 × 8.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 64.20. © Estate of James Rosenquist / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eJames Rosenquist’s 6-foot-square canvas \u003cem\u003eBroome Street Trucks After Herman Melville\u003c/em\u003e depicts a cropped, close-up image of a red 1950s GMC truck. Although a seemingly straightforward representation, certain aspects of the painting are strangely abstracted: details are generalized, reflections are empty, and, inexplicably, the color of the image shifts to yellow in the lower half, where the forms become even more liquid and diffuse. A small, separate canvas attached to the middle of the windshield disrupts the painting’s surface and slightly fractures the image. In the early 1960s, Rosenquist’s subjects (cars, jet fighters, food and cosmetic products) and technical methods—such as magnifying objects and removing traces of his hand, both skills honed in his previous career as a billboard painter—located him in the then-emerging Pop art movement. Yet his defiance of pictorial convention, as in \u003cem\u003eBroome Street Trucks After Herman Melville, \u003c/em\u003eoften frustrates interpretation, and his paintings remain among the most hermetic of those associated with Pop.\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"A red GMC truck front and fender with bold yellow color blocking.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T15:56:58.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T11:59:51.906-05:00","images":[{"id":91798,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/244/64_20_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"1124","type":"artist"}]}}}}