ART GALLERY
Photograph by Robert McKeever, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery
©Estate of Tom Wesselmann / VAGA, N. Y. & JASPAR, Tokyo, 2013 E0434
- Great American Nude #50
- Great American Nude #50 is a Tom Wesselmann painting from his Great American Nude series begun in 1961. Wesselmann's collages, taking the nude as subject, as in traditional European art, and incorporating printed advertisement clippings, represented contemporary American life surrounded by mass-produced products. Great American Nude #50 contains quotations from paintings by Renoir and Cezanne. Objects such as a real radio, a ginger ale bottle and an apple take the pictorial space from a flat surface to a three-dimensional assemblage. The radio was set to be operational. The woman reclining in a red gown, smoking a cigarette and smiling, is an image of the iconic glorification of the American way of life and at the same time a replica of a figure from mass-produced advertising.