Tom Wesselmann

Tanager Gallery, New York
Daytons Gallery 12, Minneapolis
Mayfair Gallery, London
Private Collection
Sale: Sotheby's, London, American, English and European Contemporary Art 1945-1973, 5 July 1973, Lot 8
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

New York, Tanager Gallery, Tom Wesselmann, Great American Nude, 1961
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Recent Paintings USA: The Figure, 1962

Fred Powledge, "Battle over the Bill of Rights", Life Magazine, Vol. 62, No. 13, 31 March 1967, p. 22, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals there are a number of minor chips scattered at intervals to all four extreme edges, and some minor frame rubbing in places along the top edge. There is a stable tear in the collage to the centre of the top edge inherent to the artist's working process. There is a very short scratch in the silver paint to the bottom left tip of the lower right star and another very minor scratch towards the right tip. There is slight aging to the fabric-collaged areas which is consistent with the materials chosen by the artist. Inspection under Ultraviolet light reveals some areas of fluorescence to the lower left star, a further small area on the figure's knee to the bottom left and along the thigh to the right all of which appear to be original.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Great American Nude No. 5, created in 1961, is one of the earliest examples from Tom Wesselmann’s famous eponymous series. The crucial importance Wesselmann attached to his Great American Nudes is indicated by the frequency with which he returned to the subject during the first, formative decade of his artistic career. Dating from the burgeoning moment of this iconic corpus, Great American Nude No. 5 was painted during the very first year he began making works in this series - a point evinced by its designation as only the fifth version from this body of work. Between 1961 and 1973 the artist created 100 variations on the theme: candy-pink, nubile blondes in various uninhibited poses within wholly Americanised domestic surroundings. Powerfully pictured against the Star-Spangled Banner with an accomanying window onto ideal surburban Americana, Wesselmann's blonde-bombshell beau idéal is a bold vision that utterly defines the language of Pop Art. The importance of Great American Nude No. 5 was recognised early on with a showing at MOMA in 1962, alongside Great American Nude No. 2 which was contemporaneously acquired by the museum at the time of the exhibition. Wesselmann’s affection for the present work is indicated by the particular care he took with its presentation, inscribing the words ‘gold frame’ on the reverse of the canvas alongside his Bleaker Street address.

Wesselmann's Great American Nudes were intended to brandish US icons and flag imagery; the colours red, white, and blue predominate the series and references to the Star-Spangled Banner utterly permeate his oeuvre. Over a dozen depict stars, painted or collaged in the background (as illustrated by the present work) or as a pattern within still-life aspects, while red and white stripes can also be found in many works from this series. However, as much as flag imagery proliferates in Tom Wesselmann's work,  the present example is the only one that incorporates, not just a depiction, but an actual US flag. Thus, as a work of rare significance, the appearance of Great American Nude No. 5 marks a particularly unique auction moment.

The early versions from this series owe much to the work of Henri Matisse; their collage like outlines and serpentine forms echo Matisse's ground-breaking reinvogoration of the female nude at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Indeed, Wesselmann’s Great American Nude No. 5 wittily updates the institution of the classical odalisque for the economically booming consumer era: the depiction of the nude female body, glorifying unabashedly in her nakedness, was celebrated by venerable artistic masters of the past, from Titian in the Sixteenth Century through to Ingres in the Nineteenth Century. Wesselmann recalled the importance of the artistic traditions of previous centuries on his own creative development: "In choosing representational paintings, I decided to do, as my subject matter, the history of art: I would do nudes, still-lifes, landscapes, interiors, etc." (the artist, cited in: Marco Livingstone, ‘Tom Wesselmann: Telling It like It is’, Exhibition Catalogue, Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art, Tom Wesselmann, A Retrospective survey 1962-1992,1993, p. 21). The influence of Matisse, one of the most important artists of the early Twentieth Century, can be discerned in the blissfully relaxed attitude of the figure, reminiscent, perhaps, of the abandoned pose of the nude in Goldfish and Sculpture (1912); one of Matisse’s masterpieces of the period.

The series navigates a potential contradiction in terms: whilst Wesselmann’s nudes are sexually empowered, their poses suggestive of women able to dictate the terms of their own sexual pleasure, the backgrounds in which they are placed are frequently reminiscent of the trappings of middle-class, domestic suburbia; a world in which a woman would traditionally have been dominated by her husband, a trope Wesselmann manages to wittily subvert. Yet, in Great American Nude No. 5, there is also a sense of touching intimacy in the nude’s complete lack of concern at how she appears to those watching, an intimacy that can be connected, perhaps, with Wesselmann’s growing closeness to Claire Seller, a former art student who frequently acted as a model for the nudes; the couple were to marry in 1963. As illustrated, Seller appears standing next to the present work in an installation photo from 1961 at the time of the Tanager Gallery exhibition in New York. 

The vivid, patriotic colours of Great American Nude No. 5 instantly arrest the gaze of the viewer, the oils contrasting brilliantly with the collaged landscape glimpsed through the window. Wesselmann recalled that the nationalistic palette of the early incarnations of the series was inspired by a dream he had in 1960: "He had a dream about the colours red, white and blue… When he awoke he decided to do the 'great American nude', limiting his palette to those colours and any related patriotic colours, such as a gold fringe on a flag, khaki…" (Ibid., p. 296). Great American Nude No. 5 overwhelmingly reflects this colour combination, to the extent that the American flag itself is prominently displayed, pasted onto the upper-left corner of the canvas, alongside the silver and blue star-bedecked wallpaper. Juxtaposed against an idyllic view onto perfectly manicured lawns and clapboard houses reflecting the ‘American Dream', the colours and collaged elements places this work among the most quintessential and iconic of Wesselmann's oeuvre.

The early 1960s were a period of immense cultural ferment within New York’s creative milieu, a time when Pop Art as a concept was being pioneered independently by some of the most innovative young artists of the day. Aside from Wesselmann, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol were all making their first exhilarating strides towards an entirely new artistic language, one that was dominated not by the venerated traditions of the Old Masters and their successors but by the garish, vivid world of everyday advertising, focussed on the consumer rather than the critic. Pop as a movement gained widespread credibility in 1962, with one man shows at the Green Gallery for both Wesselmann and Rosenquist and the staging of the ‘New Realists’ exhibition by Sidney Janis which definitively grouped together the artists who were to be considered the core members of Pop from this point on. Briefly the enfant terrible of the New York art world, Pop had now been adopted by the venerable artistic establishments which had nurtured the careers of the earlier generation of the New York avant-garde.

Ultimately, as an early manifestation of one of the most instantly recognisable series within the entire Twentieth Century artistic canon, Great American Nude No. 5 stands as a remarkable record of the young Wesselmann’s creative genius as he stood on the cusp of an extraordinary decade of artistic innovation and discovery.