Created during the Vietnam War, F-111 mixes fragments of consumer advertising with military imagery, evoking what President Eisenhower warned of in his departing 1961 address as "the military-industrial complex." The F-111 bomber represented the latest technological innovation in warfare and cost millions to develop. By offering a vision of this jet, as Rosenquist described it, "flying through the flak of consumer society to question the collusion between the Vietnam death machine, consumerism, the media, and advertising," F-111 suggests complicity between this "war machine" and consumer culture.
Many critics believe that Rosenquist’s F-111 was created to address the lack of connection made between war and culture by society. The painting’s
