Tom Wesselmann

Tom Wesselmann's Great American Nudes are among the quintessential icons of American Pop Art. Instantly recognizable, they are as emblematically representative of the movement as Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe silkscreens.

Along with Lichtenstein, Warhol, Oldenburg and Rosenquist, Wesselmann was one of the original five of American Pop Art who "unknown to each other" (according to Warhol), at the beginning of the sixties came "rising up out of the muck and staggering forward" (Andy Warhol cited in: POPism: The Warhol Sixties, New York, 1983, p. 3) They had no shared manifesto and their styles initially developed separately. But from the beginning they shared similar objectives: to depersonalize their art and react against abstract expressionism's elite painterliness and hermeticism. Adopting the images and visual vocabulary of contemporary popular culture, from consumer products to advertising billboards, they sought to reconnect art with everyday life. "The art galleries are being invaded by the pin headed and contemptible style of gum chewers, bobby soxers and worse, delinquents" was the horrified reaction of one critic in 1962. (M. Kozloff, ‘Pop Culture, Metaphysical Disgust and the New Vulgarians’ in: Art International, VI, 2, pp 34-36) At a symposium on Pop Art held in December of the same year, the critic Henry Geldzahler wondered at the rapid rise and success of Pop Art: "within a year and a half they have had shows, been dubbed a movement, and we are here discussing them at a symposium." (Henry Geldzahler, ‘A Symposium on Pop Art’, Arts Magazine, April 1963, special supplement, p. 37)

Like his fellow Pop Artists, Wesselmann was responding to a period of increasing affluence in America, but it was not only the thriving consumer economy that spurred his interest, it was also the increasingly relaxed attitudes towards sexual relations. Wesselmann's bright billboard nudes borrow the imagery of seductive advertisements and pin-up models, but are transposed to the intimacy of an indoor setting. His nudes lounge unselfconsciously in a world of bedrooms and bathrooms, often surrounded by the props and trophies of the American middle class, of which they are a part. Their blatant nudity and the intimate setting give the works a peepshow quality, but the models are deprived of the eyes to notice or challenge the viewer’s voyeurism. With a stick-on smile (in some works it was literally pasted onto the face, a cut-out from a glossy magazine) they absorb our interest with blank indifference. If eyes are the 'windows of the soul', then Wesselmann's eyeless American nudes have no souls to show. In the era of mass-production, even sex can be serialized and commodified.

In Great American Nude # 87, however, the unabashed sensuality is accompanied by an urgency and immediacy – she is demanding and expecting sex. The vast swath of leopard skin adds a gaudy and hypnotic intensity, while the extremities of her distended body disappear off the edge of the composition, like a snapshot. The flat bright colours thrust the image forward off the canvas and into the viewer's space and the realism of her pose contrasts disquietingly with the sterile and clean artificiality of the remainder. The added upholstery hair makes what is obviously fake suddenly seem shockingly real. We are forced to recognize in this blonde bombshell fantasy, something abrasively material – something which the stylized and depersonalized remainder would otherwise allow us tactfully to evade.

Like Rauschenberg, the foundations of Wesselmann's art lay in collage and the inclusion of found objects, and this influence carries through into this painting. Hard outlines and clearly defined fields of color give the impression of objects superimposed upon each other. His nudes could be disassembled by color into a series of separate elements: red lips, toenails and nipples, blond hair, pink flesh. It is a remarkable feat of simplification that this combination of simple references can be assembled to make the recognizable image of a naked woman. But despite the boldness of his style and the rebellious Pop Art credentials, Wesselmann's nudes clearly show the influence of Matisse in the their flowing curves and simple, bright colors, as well as a constant awareness – often playful – of the long tradition of the reclining female nude, from Titian's Venuses through Manet's Olympia. As the title of his series suggests, ironically alluding to concepts such as the Great American Novel or the American Dream, he has reinterpreted this tradition to comment on the tastes and expectations of the American public of his day.

If the Great American Nude series is a progression, an artistic vein that had to be worked out and developed to its full potential, then Great American Nude #87 stands at the climax of the sequence, and exemplifies Wesselmann’s historical importance within Pop Art.