Great American Nude #36
Artist
Tom Wesselmann
(American, 1931–2004)
Date1962
Mediumcollage of offset lithographs, enamel and polymer paint, and textiles on composition board
Dimensionsboard: 121.9 x 152.4 cm (48 x 60 in.)
ClassificationsCollages / Assemblages
Credit LineMuseum Purchase
Object number1965.393
Label TextTom Wesselmann’s signature series of Great American Nudes, begun in 1961, was inspired by a dream about the colors red, white, and blue. At the time, much of America saw itself as an upwardly-mobile society, still enjoying the postwar boom of optimism and productivity that defined the Kennedy years and experiencing a loosening of cultural attitudes toward nudity and sexuality. This was the America Wesselmann reflected in his update of a traditional painting subject—the reclining female nude in a domestic space. Here, a life-size “all-American beauty” is presented as a highly commercialized, objectified, and sexualized contemporary symbol of status, permissiveness, and exploitation. In Great American Nude #36, a hybrid of painting and collage elements, Wesselmann depicts the intimate in the language of the public. His scenario is an equation of desire and commodity in which uniqueness—of the female, of the view out the window, and of the Matisse still life painting hanging on the wall—has been undermined and replaced by a photomechanical reproduction. Even Wesselmann’s numbering in the painting’s title emphasizes production-line availability.
ProvenanceGreen Gallery, New York, NYOn View
Not on view
