Tom Wesselmann
After studying psychology at the University of Cincinnati – a course interrupted by two years’ military service – Tom Wesselmann enrolled at the Art Academy in the same city in 1956, and subsequently at the Cooper Union in New York. Like so many other artists of his generation, he viewed the then-dominant Abstract Expressionism with a mixture of admiration and criticism, before turning to classical modes of representation such as the nude, still life and landscape. The influence of Henri Matisse is evident, and at times explicit, in his works from the late 1950s. By adopting the technique of collage, Wesselmann was in fact engaging with the themes of Pop Art.
In the very early 1960s, he was, alongside his fellow Cincinnati native Jim Dine, one of the founders of the Judson Gallery in New York, where he exhibited alongside Marc Ratliff. But it was from 1961 onwards that his career really took off with the first paintings in a long series, Great American Nude, in which he deliberately favoured red, white and blue – the foundational colours to which he would sometimes add gold or the khaki of US Army uniforms. Even more explicitly, he incorporated patriotic imagery into his compositions, whether elements of the flag or depictions of the nation’s heroes. In Great American Nude #4 and the tondo Great American Nude #8, both from 1961, the persistent references to Matisse are thus juxtaposed with a portrait of George Washington, the Stars and Stripes, and the seal of the Republic. Inspired by the experiments of those who would go on to form the new avant-garde, he too drew on the media and reworked elements of popular iconography. Close to the influential critic Henry Geldzahler, he was, from 1962 onwards, drawn into the Pop Art movement that Leo Castelli helped to bring to prominence, although he took care to distance himself from it, formally rejecting the very relevance of the term.
In the very early 1960s, alongside a fellow artist from La nouvelle série, which he launched in 1962, he created the Still Life series, renewing his approach to contemporary culture and characterised by the incorporation of everyday objects. He was certainly not the first to extend the principle of collage into the third dimension, but he did so with economy, precision and detachment, so that even the most trivial objects from the domestic sphere took on a value of their own. It is hardly surprising, then, that he tended to choose plastic objects whose characteristics aligned with his ironic view of consumer society. By including a working television set, including its own screen, in Still Life #28, 1963, he continued his exploration of contrasts between different types of images. The ‘Bedroom Paintings’, ‘Landscapes’ and ‘Seascapes’ take the paradox of his art to another level, as if his aim were to modernise and Americanise themes whose classical dimension nevertheless continues to be affirmed. From the 1980s onwards, still inspired by Matisse, Wesselmann simplified his drawing style to the point of cutting aluminium into serpentine shapes.
