Beginning in January 1971, Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) undertook a large fundraising effort to raise money for E.A.T. and support the artists by assembling a major collection of works by artists active in New York in the 1960's, raise funds to buy itand donate the full collection to a museum.
JAMES ROSENQUIST TEN DAYS
Beginning in January 1971, Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) undertook a large fundraising effort to raise money for E.A.T. and support the artists by assembling a major collection of works by artists active in New York in the 1960's, raise funds to buy itand donate the full collection to a museum.
E.A.T. approached Pontus Hulten, director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, to choose the collection, because of his long-time interest in and support of American art and artists at the museum.
The artists in the collection were chosen by Hulten in consultation with Klüver and other museum people, dealersand art historians Hulten knew in New York. The collection represents a wide range of media, from painting (Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Andy Warhol) and sculpture (Dan Flavin, John Chamberlain, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Oyvind Fahlström, Robert Breer, Hans Haacke, Mark di Suvero) to new media (Robert Whitman, Nam Jun Paik, Walter De Maria) and installation (George Segal, Jim Dine, Larry Rivers) and evolved into a preeminent collection of American art from the 1960's.
James Rosenquist
Nails, 1973
The New York Collection For Stockholm opened at Moderna Museet in October 1973 with 105 American guests attending the opening. They traveled on a special charter flight organized by E.A.T. with Scandinavian Airways.
The collection of painting and sculpture represents a broad overview of artistic activity in New York in the 1960's. It included artists working in many genres and styles prevalent during that period: It embodied the range of new work of the early and middle 1960's: geometric abstraction, Pop Art’s depiction of everyday materials and themes from the mass media, the use of industrial fabrication by Minimal artists, incorporation of new technologyand the reintroduction of politics into art as reaction to the Vietnam War.
On a superficial level, Nails consists of a jaunty group of colored forms that appear to dance across the canvas. According to the artist, part of the inspiration for the series comes from his spending a night in jail after taking part in a political protestand he saw scratch marks on the wall used by inmates to mark off the number of days in groups of five. Consequently, the Nails operates not only on a formal level, but also represents a more general reflection on the passing of time, an aspect of which has a directly autobiographical content.