Collections » Browse by Artist » Wesselmann, Tom
Browse by Artist
| Artist: Wesselmann, Tom 1 of 1 |
| Still Life #2, 1962 Tom Wesselmann American, 1931-2004 Oil and collage on board 48 x 48-1/8 in. (121.9 x 122.2 cm) Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Mr. Fred Heim P.1969.070 Art © Tom Wesselmann/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Not on view Like many artists of the 1950s and 1960s, Tom Wesselman responded to postwar consumerism by incorporating elements of popular culture into his paintings. Unlike Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein, however, Wesselman was less concerned with criticizing or celebrating these aspects of contemporary life and more interested in the formal characteristics that these references brought to his work. In Still Life #2 the artist assembles a rather traditional scene, updated in both subject and style for midcentury artist and viewer. Several of the objects have been cut and pasted—even the elegant floral still life at center—and this play among the various depictions of reality was at the heart of his artistic interests. Wesselman felt that the dialogue between painted objects and collage “helps establish a momentum throughout the picture... At first glance, my pictures seem well behaved, as if—that is a still life, OK. But these things have such crazy give-and-take that I feel they get really very wild.” View Provenance |
| Artist: Wesselmann, Tom 1 of 1 |