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Historic American Pop
Paintings by Laura Roosevelt
With words from Franklin, Eleanor and Theodore Roosevelt.
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The beginnings of Pop Art
Pop takes its name from popular culture. The movement emerged in Britain during the 1950s, before Andy Warhol became its best-known American figure. Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi brought advertising, comic books, pinups and packaging into fine art, drawing on the growing influence of American consumer culture.
Mass production, celebrity and an expanding media landscape changed the images people saw every day. Pop artists made those familiar images the subject of art.
In the United States during the early 1960s, Warhol worked with Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles and Marilyn Monroe. Roy Lichtenstein enlarged the visual language of comic strips. Claes Oldenburg transformed hamburgers and other ordinary objects into large sculptures.
Often cool and observational in tone, American Pop blurred the distinction between fine art and everyday culture. Its attention to surfaces and repetition offered a way to examine consumer capitalism. Later artists would bring that visual language to other subjects.
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What does America remember?
By the late twentieth century, Pop increasingly examined the media that circulated images, as well as the products those images sold. Repeated portraits could turn people into icons and reduce complex histories to familiar symbols.
Laura Roosevelt brings that question to the American archive. Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt take the place of the consumer imagery associated with Warhol. Her work asks how a nation remembers its people and its past.
She draws on National Archives photographs, presidential speeches, wartime images, civil rights milestones and Roosevelt family materials. Together, these sources offer a way to explore the distance between political myth and lived history.
Layers of abstract painting interrupt the familiar photograph. Color and texture invite viewers to look again, reconsider the image and find a new connection to its history.
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History in the language of Pop
Historic American Pop brings the visual language of Pop Art to American democracy. Its subjects include Lincoln, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy. Pearl Harbor, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Voting Rights Act also enter the work.
Where classic American Pop often examined consumer culture through repetition, Laura Roosevelt explores the images a nation inherits and remembers. Painting changes how those images meet the viewer, giving familiar subjects a fresh context.
Roosevelt calls this approach Historic American Pop. The collection invites reflection on civic memory and on the people, events and ideals that continue to shape American life.
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On the work
“Laura Roosevelt channels the complicated undertow of our shared past, a truth many would prefer to ignore or distort."
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The artist’s perspective
“There’s a balance that occurs between historical photographs combined with abstract art that bring about a new visual experience”.
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Unity
“Where after do human rights begin? ”
Caption review note
The opening of this quotation reads “Where after” in the supplied deck. Wording needs confirmation.
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Homage
“For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, “It can’t be done.”
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Blue Eyes
“None of us wants to burrow under the ground and live in total darkness like a comfortable mole”.
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Courage
“We do not have to become heroes overnight."
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Devine Inspiration
“In the final analysis, a democratic government represents the sum total of the courage and the integrity of its individuals.”
Caption review note
Artwork title spelling “Devine Inspiration” retained from the supplied deck.
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A Soul Divided
“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”
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Declaration
“People who have glimpsed freedom will never be content until they have secured it for themselves.”
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Seers
“Peace can endure only so long as humanity really insists upon it.”
Caption review note
The supplied year is 2105. Please confirm the artwork date.
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Happy Days
“It is the self-reliant pioneer in every enterprise who beats the path along which American civilization has marched. Such individual effort is the glory of America.”
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Indominable
“It takes more than this to kill a bull moose.”
Caption review note
The supplied title is “Indominable” and the year is 2106. Please confirm both.
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Through A Glass Darkly
“….all we have known of the glories of democracy is its freedom…"
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Devoirs
“There is so much to do, so many engrossing challenges, so many heartbreaking and pressing needs, so much in every day that is profoundly interesting.”
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Keel-laying
“America has always been a land of action, a land of adventurous pioneering, a land of growing and building.”
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Our Boys
“The motto of war is: Let the strong survive; Let the weak die. The motto for peace is: Let the strong help the weak to survive.”
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Faces of Nam
“We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests.”
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Sowing Hope
“We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions, bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality.”
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Minting Of Democracy
“Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
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A Wish
“…to end the year a little wiser, a little kinder, and therefore a little happier.”
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Prohibition
“I think this would be a good time for beer.”
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Happiness Is
“I would not be happy unless I had some regular work to do every day and I imagine that I will always feel that way no matter how old I am.”
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Grandmére
“I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.”
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The Sinking Of The USS Arizona
“There is no such thing as impregnable defense against powerful aggressors who sneak up cutting-edge the dark and strike without warning.”
Caption review note
The phrase “cutting-edge the dark” appears in the supplied quotation and needs confirmation.
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A Bull Moose Party
“Government is competent when all who compose it work as trustees for the whole people.”
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I Salute the Empire of Texas
“It is not mere acres that count in this world, it is rather the character of the people who dwell upon them.”
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Chapel in the Woods
“Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of a world made new.”
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He Looked Fear in the Face
“We must do that which we think we cannot.”
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Virgil Quick Come See
“But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people.”
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4th Term
“Whatever happens in an election has to be all right, and one can only trust that the collective wisdom of the people is in the best interests of the country.”
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Day In Infamy
“We are not warlike people. We are not interested in aggression. We do not covet one square inch of the territory of any one nation.”
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Atlantic Treaty
“Yes, the decisions of our democracy may be slowly arrived at. It is binding on us all. And the world is no longer left in doubt.”
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Uncommon Warriors
“It is essential that we cast out fear and face the unknown, as our ancestors faced the unknown, with imagination and integrity, with courage and a high heart.”
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Hats Off
“The American people have a good habit , the habit of going right ahead and accomplishing the impossible.”
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The Big Three
“We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear."
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Lilac of Belgium
“Some could feel they were endowed by God, some by nature and some by Buddha. The interpretation was for all to name for themselves.”
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100th Anniversary
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
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About Laura Roosevelt
Laura Roosevelt is an American contemporary artist based in Dallas and the founder of LR Art House. Her painting, sculpture and work across other media explore democracy, history and human experience.
Her signature series, Historic American Pop, brings historical images into conversation with painting and selected quotations. Working primarily at a large scale, she uses color and texture to connect abstraction with memory and historical reflection.
Her interest in leadership, civic responsibility and cultural identity also has a personal context. She is a great-granddaughter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Her work also includes service on the Board of Directors of the Better Angels Society. Across her practice, she explores the American experience alongside wider questions of human rights and democratic ideals.