Tom Wesselmann

Sidney Janis Gallery, New York
Samuel and Luella Maslon, Rancho Mirage (acquired from the above in 1978)
By descent to the present owner from the above

Slim Stealingworth, Tom Wesselmann, New York, 1980, p. 210, illustrated

 

This work is in very good condition overall. The surface is bright, fresh and clean. There is evidence of light wear and handling to the edges. There are some extremely minor and unobtrusive pinpoint accretions. Under ultraviolet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Unframed. *Please note the auction begins at 9:30 am on November 14th.*
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.
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Tom Wesselmann's acclaimed Great American Nude series epitomized the contemporary American Pop avant-garde. The present work, titled Great American Nude 1977, embraces the era's fantastic public spirit, which spawned similar aspirational narratives in literature (The Great American Novel) and society at large (The American Dream), but is executed a decade after Wesselmann's original Great American Nude series. Like the earlier iteration of this series, the present work shows a reclining nude in a bedroom scene, but this 1977 version is closer aesthetically to Wesselmann's Bedroom paintings of the 1970s. Wesselmann appropriately puts the date of the work, 1977, in the title of the present work, which can therefore be understood as an updated version of the artist's acclaimed 1960s Great American Nude series.

A consistent palette of radiant reds, whites and blues pervades his billboard-sized paintings, accented with patriotic yellows borrowed from Old Glory's tassels. These works are among the most exuberant, erotically charged and iconic images of the Pop era. The celebrated series, which Wesselmann commenced in 1961, in many ways heralded Pop Art's audacious new direction, which would forever change the shape of the international art world. Wesselmann claimed to have vivid dreams of the primary colors before beginning work on the series, and indeed, their simple tone intensifies these images' totemic power. Wesselmann diminished the evidence of brushstrokes to enhance their graphic flatness, here achieved almost entirely with bold blocks of color. 

Great American Nude 1977 depicts an enticing image of a brunette nude posing suggestively, with her arms over her head, smiling invitingly in an intimate bedroom scene. Always anonymous, Wesselmann's Great American Nude 1977 is depicted with only female sexual signifiers such as the open lipsticked mouth and nipples on her breasts. Wesselmann deliberately left the face blank to avoid the suggestion of a portrait, the punchy red outline of disembodied lips forming the figure's most defined feature. Thus, as deeply personal as the painting's content could have been, Wesselmann leaves the erotic potential open to individual interpretation and the imagination.

The subject’s surroundings are equally carefully constructed; disparate still life elements give texture to Wesselmann's ordinary backdrops – flowers in bloom, a partially exposed telephone, circular perfume bottle and what we assume to be a framed image of the subject herself – adorn the canvas, loaded with immediate and recognizable imagery that the viewer can easily identify. However, their function within the heterogeneous assemblage of this very intimate domestic scene grows complicated, producing a palpable tension with the less decipherable curves behind Wesselmann's erotic figure. Sex, power and beauty permeate.

In downtown New York City in the 1960s, Pop artists assembled and collaged, sourcing material from the booming American economy's "vulgar" and prolific commercial industries. They recalled the actions of European Dadaists and Constructivists earlier in the century, who had aimed to bring a wider set of concerns into focus, to merge the urgencies of art and life. American Pop joyfully engaged with the reproducible photographic image and other figurative symbols taken from the everyday - in contrast to the hermetic highbrow of their immediate predecessors, the Abstract Expressionists. The Pop artists redefined in the most basic sense the scope and expectations of even the most radical contemporary painting. Wesselmann himself studied with Willem de Kooning at Cooper Union in the 1950s, but grew convinced that a young man had limited prospects in the gestural terrain of overwrought action painting. As Wesselmann has described, he was originally motivated to create the Great American Nudes because he desired an alternative to the virile masters of Abstract Expressionism, yet still equaling their expressive force. While turning away from abstraction and toward the body and still life as his muses, he strove to create dynamic and colorful painting that would rival the heat and primal force of Abstract Expressionism. With this signature breakthrough series, Wesselmann’s Great American Nude paintings have maintained a parodic levity given its ambitious title with a humorous sensibility that would soon become one of the hallmarks of Pop Art.

In composition, Wesselmann's Great American Nudes are both studied and complex, consciously reflecting on the reclining female nude's art-historical lineage, from Titian to Manet to Matisse - the latter of which had the most influence on Wesselmann's own fluid, supple forms. Wesselmann's voluptuous reclining nudes put a new spin on Matisse's odalisques, such as Odalisque with Magnolias from 1923-1924, suddenly reincarnated as all-American pin-ups, comfortably ensconced in middle-class settings of contrasting colors and shapes. Great American Nude 1977 contains heightened definition and less abstraction than the earlier nudes of the 1960s, appearing almost digitally generated or graphically designed. The ruby lips of Great American Nude 1977 recur throughout the series, which in this case connect visually to the crimson background, the ruby flower and the closed mouth image in the foreground. The lips also anticipate another emblem: Warhol's serialized diptych of Marilyn Monroe's seductive pout from 1964.

The Great American Nude series, and Great American Nude 1977 in particular, express the imagery and charged emotion that characterized Post-War America, establishing Wesselmann as a master of color and collage, whose deft manipulation of art historical and contemporary symbols heralded the robust reign of Pop. This work's reclining Pop goddess would indeed repeatedly reincarnate herself throughout Wesselmann's career, reigning as both his signature subject and a star in the constellation of Pop.