The Power Painting That Set James Rosenquist's Auction Record

James Rosenquist's Be Beautiful (1964) sold for $3.3m at Sotheby's in New York on May 14, 2014. The oil on canvas work had not been traded before.

Rosenquist painted his monumental canvas four years after quitting as a signwriter and billboard painter, when his career took off following his New York debut. Speaking the year he painted Be Beautiful, he recalled: "Then I started working, doing commercial painting and I got all of the paint quality I ever wanted. I had paint running down my armpits."

Although seen at the time as a quintessential Pop artist, the artist from North Dakota with an eye-catching backstory had an affinity with the Abstract Expressionists he helped eclipse. Like them, he worked on an epic scale, delighting in the medium of painting. He told ARTnews in 1964: "Painting is probably more exciting than advertising—so why shouldn’t it be done with that power and gusto."

Rosenquist's record-breaking early work, which measures more than 2m wide, featured in the artist's Guggenheim retrospective in New York in 2003, which traveled to the Menil in Houston and the Guggenheim Bilbao.

The sale beat Rosenquist's previous auction record by $1.21m, a 57% rise. His previous record was set by F-111 (1964), which sold for $2.09m at Sotheby's on November 11, 1986.

A Brief History of Rosenquist at Auction