How did James Rosenquist’s F-111 respond to the Vietnam War?

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Five Andy Warhol paintings of Campbell's soup cans, each labeled with a different soup variety, displayed in a row on a white wall at Museumsquartier in Vienna. — Pop art *Campbell's Soup Cans*, polymer paint on canvas by Andy Warhol, 1962; a selection of five on display in the Museumsquartier, Vienna.

James Rosenquist’s F-111 (1965) served as a powerful reflection of the growing United States involvement in the Vietnam War.

As a monumental, 51-panel painting, the work utilized Rosenquist’s signature style of large, collagelike amalgamations of ambiguous imagery. To comment on the conflict, the painting juxtaposed close-up views of the titular military aircraft—a fighter-bomber—with the imagery of an atomic explosion. By placing these military motifs against a backdrop of American consumer goods, the work registered the darker, more volatile side of the United States during the 1960s, contrasting the era's domestic abundance with the realities of military aggression.123