A leading figure in the Pop Art movement alongside Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann has spent his life hijacking popular imagery; an undisputed fan of Henri Matisse, he has kept the use of pure colors and a keen sense of composition. This week, we present a work from the Smoking Cigarette series.
Tom WESSELMANN (1931-2004)
Smoking cigarette in ashtray , 2000
Liquitex on cut bristol board
Make the ordinary elegant
The work Smoking cigarette in ashtray represents a smoking cigarette placed on a red ashtray. This pictorial composition is characteristic of the imagery used by the artist. Tom Wesselmann has adapted traditional styles of painting throughout history such as still life here. This pictorial composition between collage and painting would almost make this cigarette elegant.
At the end of his life, Tom Wesselmann reduced his references to popular imagery and increasingly turned to abstraction. This work dating from 2000, four years before its disappearance, embraces the characteristics of a non-figurative work with large colored areas and extremely simplified lines. It testifies to his perfect mastery of color but also of the line. Smoking cigarette in ashtray is made of cutouts that are reminiscent of the cutouts of Henri Matisse, whom he particularly admired.
The cigarette is an element taken up in several of his works. In the 60s / 70s, she was considered a sexy symbol. Wesselmann's works of red lips with a cigarette bear witness to this erotic dimension.
This composition is made on cardboard painted with liquitex (a form of acrylic). It is signed and dated "wesselmann '00" at the bottom center, titled and annotated "Smoking cigarette in ashtray, D0015" on the back on a label with the annotations on the back of the work. Finally, it is recorded in the Archives of the Estate Tom Wesselman under the inventory number D0015.
The artist's works are increasingly sought after by Pop Art collectors. The record prices of his contemporaries Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were no stranger to the enthusiasm for the works of Tom Wesselmann.
Tom wesselmann
Tom Wessselmann was born in 1931 in Cincinnati. Wanting to become a cartoonist, he went to New York to study at the Cooper Union, from which he graduated in 1959. Finally, he gave up comics to devote himself to painting. At a time when many artists are abandoning figurative painting in favor of abstraction, Tom Wesselmann takes the opposite view and focuses on the elements of urban life to represent them in a suggestive, sensual way positioning them as icons.
Drawing inspiration from advertising imagery, his ambition was to portray modern life. The artist became famous in the 60s with his female nudes: lascivious women, often deprived of the head, which he declines at will in his Great American Nudes .
Wessselman is closely interested in collage, a historical practice that can be found in particular in the work. Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? by Richard Hamilton, considered one of the first Pop works of the time.
In his compositions, the basis of which remained painting, he included various objects mainly in relief. His collages have made So, his Bathtub Collage of 1963 features a young woman in the shower, and in front of the painted canvas are adjusted a shower curtain, a laundry basket and a towel holder in relief.
