Lot Essay
In the early 1960's, Tom Wesselmann was grouped with the Pop artists: Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol, "who based their work on images from discredited mass culture sources like advertisements, billboards, comic books, movies and TV. Taking [John] Cage's advice to wake up to the life they were living, they painted what they saw around them--seeming in the process to embrace the materialism, spiritual vacuity, and ludicrously sexualized environment of affluent America" (B. Rose, American Art Since 1900, New York 1975, pp. 189-190).
In his collages and paintings of still lifes, bedrooms, and his famous series of Great American Nudes, Wesselmann captured all of the above. In Still Life #18 we see the top American brand-name products of the period--Coca-Cola, Canada Dry, Winston cigarettes; lusciously pictured fruits and vegetables; even a chocolate ice cream sundae. The rich, sensual images are taken directly from advertising sources and collaged to the panel. The flat, bright colors of the background and the reproduction of a Mondrian painting on the wall bespeak a clean, prosperous contemporary environment--the kind one might see in the large, slick color magazines of the period, advertising to the new consumer culture the style of life to which they were meant to aspire. It was Wesselmann's examination of this phenomena in his first mature works which brought him to the attention of important dealers such as Richard Bellamy of the Green Gallery, and Sidney Janis, who included him in the important exhibition called New Realists in November 1962, which brought together for the first time all of the important Pop artists.
In his collages and paintings of still lifes, bedrooms, and his famous series of Great American Nudes, Wesselmann captured all of the above. In Still Life #18 we see the top American brand-name products of the period--Coca-Cola, Canada Dry, Winston cigarettes; lusciously pictured fruits and vegetables; even a chocolate ice cream sundae. The rich, sensual images are taken directly from advertising sources and collaged to the panel. The flat, bright colors of the background and the reproduction of a Mondrian painting on the wall bespeak a clean, prosperous contemporary environment--the kind one might see in the large, slick color magazines of the period, advertising to the new consumer culture the style of life to which they were meant to aspire. It was Wesselmann's examination of this phenomena in his first mature works which brought him to the attention of important dealers such as Richard Bellamy of the Green Gallery, and Sidney Janis, who included him in the important exhibition called New Realists in November 1962, which brought together for the first time all of the important Pop artists.