ART CITIES:Paris-Tom Wesselmann
Tom Wesselmann is one of the leading figures of Pop Art. He is best known for his career-spanning series, “Great American Nude,” which featured female figures in intensely saturated interiors. Wesselmann’s main interest was not to draw attention to the subject, but “To make Figurative Art as exciting as Abstract Art”. He succeeded at this, and his work engages our senses.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Almine Rech Gallery Archive
The exhibition “A Different Kind of Woman” is inspired by Tom Wesselmann’s 1970 exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York and features “Bedroom Tit Box” (1968-70) a Wesselmann classic that is restaged for the first time in Paris. The exhibition also presents seminal examples of Wesselmann’s post-collage works, making this exhibition at Almine Rech Gallery in Paris the most significant presentation of the artist’s work in Paris since the 1995 retrospective at the Fondation Cartier. The starting point to “Bedroom Tit Box” (1968-70) was when he met a woman whose breasts were just the right size and shape he had in mind for the part, so he drew her and began studies for the box, which came to contain fully dimensioned painted object. The box containing this set had a plexiglass front and was placed into and behind a wall panel, with the real woman reclining unseen on a sponge-rubber covered scaffold behind the wall. “Smoker #3” (1968) is a fine example of series of “Mouth” series that began in 1965. This large canvas depicts a monumental mouth with a cigarette dangling from the lower lip. A large trail of gray smoke wafts from the tip, and the full red lips contrasts sharply with the white teeth. In its focus on one part of the body, this enhances the element of fetishism present in Wesselmann’s earlier work. He would continue this line of inquiry into the ‘70s in both his “Smoker Study” and “Seascapes” series, in which a single body part, such as a foot or breast, is the primary focus of the composition. Wesselmann’s “Mouth” series inspired one of the most iconic band logos of all time, The Rolling Stones cover for Sticky Fingers, designed in 1971 by Ed Pasche. The introduction of a male presence into the work implies a penetration of the bounds of art, an idea that is rather overtly expressed in “Bedroom Painting No. 19” (1969), the work has a certain shock effect, for whilst phallic forms abound in art, certainly in Pop Art, the direct presentation of male genitals independently of the rest of the body is, to say the least, unusual. The reference to a penetration of pictorial space in traditional terms of dominance and activeness, is given a curious tension by the fact that the horizontal phallus takes the conventional position of the reclining nude. In “Bedroom blonde with T.V.” (1984-93) while he insisted there was no psychic depth to his art, Wesselmann’s paintings work a slow magic on our senses. Associations between the landscape and the nude persist throughout Wesselmann’s work. The golden curves of the nude rise from the nipple to the crown of the head like mountains in the sun, elements of blue decor in the background mimic sky. With the “Bedroom Paintings”, Wesselmann brings together elements of his “Great American Nudes”, “Still Lifes” and “Seascapes” series, shifting the scale and focus of objects surrounding a nude figure.
Info: Almine Rech Gallery, 64 Rue de Turenne, Paris, Duration: 17/10-21/12/16, Day & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.alminerech.com
