TOM WESSELMANN

Emerging as a foundational figure of Pop art in the early 1960s, Wesselmann (1931–2004) produced mixed-media paintings that approach traditional genres—interiors, landscapes, nudes, and still lifes— by combining modernist figuration with elements of mass culture. Created in an era during which consumption, representation, and sexuality were all subject to radical reconsideration, his works recontextualize artistic iconography in a mode of abstraction that is contemporary, American, and guided by what the artist termed “erotic simplification.”

A highlight of the exhibition is Great American Nude #1 (1961), the painting that inaugurated a series of one hundred numbered works produced through 1973. A recumbent female nude stretches across the composition’s top half, its unmodulated colors, flat shapes, and spare curving lines engaging with a stylistic lineage that began with Henri Matisse. Behind the figure are a collaged reproduction of a hilly landscape with an ocean view, the French tricolor, and a pattern of stars that evokes the US flag—elements that signify Wesselmann’s artistic influences.

Beginning in 1965, Wesselmann produced a series of seascape paintings and collages, each of which represents a cropped body part—feet, breasts, or facial profiles—against saturated bands of color denoting sky, waves, and sand. He would continue to explore the subject in works that juxtapose figurative and natural elements. In the expansive shaped canvas Seascape #24 (1967–71), a figure’s breast is made prominent by omission. “As can happen on a bright beach,” the artist wrote, “the flesh drops away in this moment of awareness of the glimpse into the sunlit background, although the nipple stays a part of the scene because of its color, form, and importance as a focus.”

Other paintings and drawings chart Wesselmann’s experiments with style and format throughout his career. Still Life with Daffodil, Rose and Green Plate (1985) and Country Bouquet with Hibiscus (1989) employ a process in which line drawings were translated into interconnected pieces of laser-cut steel that he then painted. Paintings including Still Life with Blonde and Two Goldfish (1999) and Blue Nude #8 (2000) show his continuing interest in abstraction, brilliant color, and the nude and still life as subjects.