James Rosenquit's "Playmate" (1966) is on view as part of the pop art icon's solo exhibition, "Dream World: Paintings, Drawings and Collages, 1961–1968," at Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Seoul

In the mid-1960s, Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine — then a meteoric force in American pop culture with its ethos of unapologetic sexuality — invited a group of artists to create fine art pieces that captured the essence of the Playmate, the iconic female model gracing the magazine's centerfold.

Among the creatives approached for this somewhat kitschy project were pop art icons like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist.

Rosenquist reportedly rejected the idea of crafting a glamorized portrayal in line with the magazine's aesthetic. Instead, he sought to inject a subversive dose of reality.

What came to be born was the monumental “Playmate” (1966), a composition of four separate, slightly misaligned canvases of varying sizes. The painting features the nude torso of a pregnant woman standing between a pickle and strawberries with cream.

Rather than explicitly pandering to the imagined male gaze, which reduces the female form to an oversimplified ideal, the work shifts the focus. It reimagines the erotic scene into a dreamlike reflection of the pregnant woman's potential food cravings, foregrounding an often-overlooked aspect of the raw female experience.

“I really loved it because he disrupted the whole project in a certain way by doing something very real,” recalled Mimi Thompson, writer and wife of the late artist, during a press preview of Rosenquist's solo show in Seoul.

She added that the effects of pregnancy on a woman's body were likely fresh in Rosenquist's mind, as he had become a father for the first time with his first wife just two years before completing the painting.

“He used to say that if you want to know anything about his life, you should just look at his paintings. It's all there.”

James Rosenquist's subject matter drew from America's media-saturated popular culture of his time, featuring recognizable images from printed advertisements and consumer products. Often, he combined these fragmented visuals of celebrities, industrial machinery and food products into deliberately disjointed collages. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Seoul

“Playmate,” exhibited for the first time in 15 years, is a centerpiece of the artist's ongoing exhibit at Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul.

Titled “Dream World: Paintings, Drawings and Collages, 1961–1968,” it zooms in on the transformative decade for the American painter, who cemented his position at the forefront of the 1960s pop art movement alongside icons like Warhol and Lichtenstein.

James Rosenquit's "Source and Preparatory Sketch for The Light That Won't Fail I" (1961) / Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Seoul

Through his canvas works, as well as rarely seen preparatory sketches on display, the exhibition delves into how Rosenquist drew on his background as a commercial billboard painter to forge his signature visual language.

His subject matter drew heavily from the media-saturated popular culture of his time, featuring recognizable images from printed advertisements and consumer products. Oftentimes, he combined these fragmented visuals of celebrities, industrial machinery and food products into deliberately disjointed, uncanny collages.

This approach was influenced by his experience as a billboard artist, where he worked perched on scaffolding high above the metropolis, creating massive images one small section at a time.

“He said it was like painting a hundred abstract paintings at once, and only when you backed away, the (entire) image was there,” Thompson noted.

Ken Johnson, in his 2017 New York Times obituary for the artist, wrote, “The paintings could be viewed both as critiques of modern consumerism and as glimpses into the collective American consciousness.”

James Rosenquit's "Bedspring" (1962) / Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Seoul

In addition to his collages, several pieces in the Seoul show highlight Rosenquist's experimentation with physically subverting how his images are presented.

“Bedspring” (1962) is dubbed by the gallery as “his most radical pictorial intervention at the time of its creation.”

Here, a square canvas depicting a fragment of a blue-eyed woman's face is stretched across a silver-painted wood frame, held tight by 11 pieces of twine. This setup creates a palpable tension between the image and its material form.

“When he was asleep, he would dream of these women,” Thompson said. “I think it was more about him experimenting with materials and a section of the painting that he normally didn't use.”

James Rosenquit's "Daley Portrait" (1968) / Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Seoul

Rosenquist also pushed boundaries with “Daley Portrait” (1968), employing thinly sliced polyester films to craft an image of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. Daley's name became notorious for his violent response to the 1968 Chicago riots following Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination.

This portrait, created as a form of protest, flails and rearranges itself with every breeze, symbolizing Daley as an impulsive leader wielding power that is both erratic and fleeting.

“Dream World” runs through Jan. 25, 2025, at Thaddaeus Ropac Seoul.