Great American Nude No. 79

Tom Wesselmann was inspired to do his series of Great American Nudes in late 1959 or early 1960 when he had a dream about the words "Red, White and Blue." These early works tended to be Pop collages that incorporated still-life elements that tended toward consumer products, celebrity or American historical figures flanking a voluptuous female nude. By the mid-1960s Wesselmann had developed substantially as a technical artist and his works began to focus on painterly concerns. Great American Nude No. 79 depicts an enticing image of a blond nude posing suggestively, with her arms over her head, smiling invitingly in an intimate bedroom scene. Always anonymous, Wesselmann's Great American Nude is depicted with only female sexual signifiers such as the open lipsticked mouth and nipples on her breasts. Her surroundings are equally carefully constructed. Not only does the printed paper collage elements of the floral and fruit still-life act as a decorative accent and a symbol of the woman's fecundity but also locates the placing of the nude as a domestic setting, which is further emphasized by the drawn curtain revealing a bright blue sky with puffy white clouds.

The present work has not lost any of frank directness with which it references sex, power and beauty. It captures the era where California cool ruled and the Beach Boys were imploring America to go surfing. The counter-culture and the social upheaval that accompanied it had yet to take full control of youth culture. Still though there had been a loosening of social mores and the present picture captures the combination of the 1950s American ideal with the evolving sexed-up and turbulent society that would soon come to dominate it.