Tom Wesselmann

Green Gallery, New York

Private Collection, New York

Galerie Ricke, Kassel

Private Collection

Galerie Ricke, Cologne

The Helga and Walther Lauffs Collection, Germany (acquired from the above in 1969)

New York, Green Gallery, Tom Wesselmann, 1962

Krefeld, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, on long term loan, 1969-2008

Krefeld, Museum Haus Lange, Pow! Werke der Pop Art aus der Sammlung Lauffs, 2002

New York, David Zwirner; and Zurich, Hauser & Wirth, Selections from the Collection of Helga and Walther Lauffs, 2008 

Gerhard Storck, et al., Sammlung Helga und Walther Lauffs im Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Krefeld: Amerikanische und Europäische Kunst der sechziger und siebziger Jahre, Krefeld 1983, p. 78, no. 413, illustrated

Marianne Stockebrand, Ed., Rolf Ricke – Texte von Künstlern, Kritikern, Sammlern, Freunden und Kollegen geschrieben für Rolf Ricke aus Anlass seines 25-jährigen Galeriejubiläums, Cologne 1990, p. 97, installation view

Christiane Meyer-Stoll, Sammlung Rolf Ricke: Ein Zeitdokument, Ostfildern-Ruit 2008, p. 33, installation view

Steidl/Zwirner & Wirth, Alexandra Whitney, Eds., The Helga and Walther Lauffs Collection, Vol. I, New York 2009, p. 98, installation view; pp. 100-01, illustrated in colour; and Vol. II, p. 213, no. 277, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is deeper and richer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The collaged elements appear to have faded slightly. Very close inspection reveals minute fly spots in isolated places throughout and a few minor rub marks to the centre of the left edge. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra violet light.
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The iconic works that comprise the Great American Nudes launched both Tom Wesselmann’s artistic career and established his place as one of the founding members of the Pop art movement. Replete with the artist's signature American iconography, bold colours and a striking central figure, Great American Nude #42 from 1962 is a triumphant archetype of Wesselmann's signature series. Initiated in 1961 with Great American Nude #1 and concluded in 1973 with Great American Nude #100, examples from this iconic series reside in the most prestigious American museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.                                                                                       

Commanding the viewer's attention and dominating the oval composition of Great American Nude #42 the figure has raised her arms, framing her head in a confident presentation of self-display. Constructed by no more than a set of wavering, and loosely delineated contours, the nude’s body defines and commands a pictorial space that opens up into a domestic American setting. Subtly signifying the figure's eroticism through a sequence of organic curves, the female form is described with minimum elaboration. Indeed, the only hints of colour or detail are in the nude's lips, nipples and hair, accenting the figure's sensuality and amplifying her objectification. According to Wesselmann, facial features would imbue the figure with a personality and detract from his carefully constructed visual arrangement, and thus the visage of Great American Nude #42 is reduced to a carnal mouth. Reflecting on the nudes of this series, Tom Wesselmann wrote that an “underlying interest in the erotic” was what “caused the conflict between abstraction and realism to be resolved in favour of more realism” (Slim Stealingworth, Tom Wesselmann, New York 1980, p. 23).

The early 1960s saw a rise in popular mass media with a proliferation of seductive images of modern marvels and creature comforts that stoked consumer desire. The accumulation of commodities was no longer merely a sign of success and power, it had become synonymous with the American dream. Within the crucible of this consumerist economy, tremendous social change during the 1950s would dramatically shift the artistic direction of the United States. Indeed, Wesselmann declared that despite his passion for Abstract Expressionism, and particularly the work of Willem de Kooning, academic painting was central to his work: “when I made the decision in 1959 that I was not going to be an abstract painter; that I was going to be a representational painter… I only got started by doing the opposite of everything I loved. And 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.” (Tom Wesselmann quoted in: Marco Livingstone, ‘Tom Wesselmann: Telling It like It is’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art, Tom Wesselmann, A Retrospective survey 1962-1992, 1993, p. 21).

Wesselmann’s Great American Nudes parallel the Great American Novel or the Great American Dream, two foundational concepts in American culture. The artist was among the earliest and key members of the nascent Pop art in New York, who responded to the unprecedented cohesion, wealth, and consumerism of late fifties American culture and successfully merged the modernist sensibilities of the budding movement into a cohesive whole. With each piece, he sought to generate the same visceral drama and powerful confrontation found in the greatest Abstract Expressionist works, but with a visual logic predicated on American contemporary culture. Furthermore, Wesselmann’s nudes, still-lifes, and landscapes would look to revitalise the traditional motifs of Western painting through contemporary idioms.

Looking to the monolithic French tradition of Ingres, Rousseau, Modigliani, and Matisse, Wesselmann achieved the ultimate Americanisation of the paradigmatic European nude, articulating a powerful coalescence of classical odalisque and American popular imagery. The heterogeneous assemblage of bold colours and patterns of Great American Nude #42 bears a strong similarity to French modernism, whose protagonists advocated a reduction in favour of strict verisimilitude. A distinct parallel can be seen in Henri Matisse’s Odalisque au tambourin (1925-26) housed in The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The central female nude is comfortably ensconced in an intimate domestic setting of contrasting colours and shapes. Equally, the surrounding of Wesselmann's Great American Nude #42 is similarly constructed; disparate still life elements give texture to Wesselmann's ordinary backdrop – a bunch of bananas, a packet of Rice Krispies and a window with a partial view to the rolling hills of the surrounding country side – adorn the canvas. The red and white wallpaper and striped fabrics in the foreground contend for visual dominance and Great American Nude #42 embodies Wesselmann’s view that “if all the positive and negative areas became as strong as possible… the image could become one strong positive shape” (Ibid., p. 20). With its elegant curvilinear outline and candy pink hue, Great American Nude #42 embodies a sensual Pop idol that would become a seminal leitmotif in the development of Pop art.