Off the Continental Divide
Between starting and finishing this print, Rosenquist made a large four-panel painting of the same subject, ‘Slipping off the Continental Divide’. A study for the composition is in the Art Institute of Chicago. The imagery is divided between East and West halves: a car window frame, stairs, a book and nails in fives (as in primitive counting: four strokes and a fifth across them). The artist was born in North Dakota, near the Continental Divide along the Rocky Mountains; he has said ‘the whole print is about myself... I live in the middle of the country... and I can either go West or East’
Petros Malayan
1966
