Great American Nude N°48

After studying psychology at the University of Cincinnati, interrupted by a two-year military service, Tom Wesselmann enrolled at the Art Academy of the same city in 1956, then at the Cooper Union in New York. Like so many other artists of his generation, he had a view that was both admiring and critical of Abstract Expressionism. Abstract then triumphant, he then turned to classical modes of representation of the nude, still life, and landscape. The influence of Henri Matisse is noticeable and sometimes explicit in his attempts from the late fifties. By adopting the collage technique, Wesselmann was indeed aligning himself with the issues of Pop art. At the very beginning of the sixties, he, along with a fellow Cincinnati native, Jim Dine, was among the founders of the Judson Gallery in New York, where he exhibited alongside Marc Ratliff. But it was from 1961 that his career truly took off with the first paintings of a long series, Great American Nude, where he deliberately favoured red, white, and blue – foundational colours to which he would sometimes add gold or the khaki of the American army uniforms. Even more explicitly, he incorporated patriotic imagery into his compositions, whether it was elements of the flag or effigies of national heroes. In Great American Nude #4 or in the tondo Great American Nude #8, both from 1961, the persistent references to Matisse are thus juxtaposed with a portrait of George Washington, the star-spangled banner, and the seal of the Republic. Stimulated by the experiments of those who would form the new avant-garde, he too draws from the media and reworks elements of popular iconography. Close to the influential critic Henry Geldzahler, he would be enlisted in the Pop movement as early as 1962, which Leo Castelli would help to make known, even though he took care to distinguish himself from it, formally rejecting the very relevance of the term.

The new series he initiates in 1962, the Still Life, renews his approach to contemporary culture and is characterised by the incorporation of everyday objects. He is certainly not the first to extend the principle of collage to the third dimension, but he does so with economy, precision, and detachment, such that the most trivial objects of the domestic universe acquire their own value. It is no surprise, then, that he prefers to choose plastic objects whose characteristics satisfy his ironic vision of consumer society. By including a running television set, his included, in Still Life #28, 1963, he continued his search for contrasts between different types of images. The Bedrooms Paintings, the Landscapes, and the Seascapes extend the paradox of his art to another level, as if for him it were a matter of modernising and Americanizing themes whose classical dimension continues to be asserted. From the 1980s onwards, still inspired by Matisse, Wesselmann simplified his drawing to the point of cutting aluminium into serpentine shapes.

Like most of the works in the series, Great American Nude No. 48, 1963, can be seen as a tribute to Matisse. Here, Wesselmann included a reproduction of a still life by the French master, while the female figure reclining on a sofa also presents itself as a Matissean reminiscence. On the left side, an extension towards reality unified by chromatic resonances, a radiator, a bedside table topped with a bouquet of plastic flowers, and a lit window opening onto the fictitious outside space are incorporated. It is one of Wesselmann's works where the theatrical character is most pronounced, among other things, by its large dimensions and the extension of the pictorial space onto the floor.