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La Promesse du Bonheur

Tom Wesselmann - La Promesse du Bonheur
This catalogue gives a critical overview of a key American Pop artist focusing on specific themes within his work: Victorian and post-Victorian sexuality, female agency, postwar economic abundance, beauty, the erotics of anticipation, the politics of the gaze, and strategies of indeterminacy. Includes essays by Chris Sharp and Sabrina Tarasoff.
“The promise of happiness attached to taut tits and their Coca-Cola casual marketing was flattened into an austere vision, radical only in its Hardwickian longing for the "inevitable." Much like the indefinitely postponed "orgasm" that has elsewhere stalled in Wesselmann's painterly time, the "inevitable" was the end to or suspension of fantasy. With increased visibility and access came desensitization, banality, and boredom—the seductive, Warholian center vortex of the 1960s.”
—Sabrina Tarasoff

Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Tom Wesselmann: La Promesse du Bonheur”, curated by Chris Sharp with the scientific coordination of Cristiano Raimondi, held at Villa Paloma in Monaco June 29, 2018, through January 6, 2019, this catalogue is a critical overview of a key American Pop artist and an important opportunity to analyze specific aspects of his work: Victorian and post-Victorian sexuality, female agency, postwar economic abundance, beauty, the erotics of anticipation, the politics of the gaze, and strategies of indeterminacy. Every aspect of the book's design, including its more than 170 color illustrations, is conceived to reflect on the artist's haptic, indexical painterly approach and oversize scale system.
Through Steven Marcus's concept of “pornotopia” and the perspective of economy and abundance in postwar American society, the critical essay by Chris Sharp examines Wesselmann's depictions of the sexual, developed formally in the works by means of hyperbole, hierarchies of elements, elision, and omission. The second critical essay by Sabrina Tarasoff leverages Julian Wasser's iconic 1963 photograph Duchamp Playing Chess with a Nude, the 1969 “breast action” during one of Theodor W. Adorno's classes, and more to deliberate the intentional in-betweenness in Wesselmann's work, “interest” as a category preceding definition, semantic versus formal dimensions, and midcentury sensibilities regarding masculinity and female empowerment.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Villa Paloma, Monaco, from June 29, 2018, to January 6, 2019.
Tom Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 23, 1931. He attended Hiram College in Ohio from 1949 to 1951 before entering the University of Cincinnati. In 1953, his studies were interrupted by a two-year enlistment in the army, during which time he began drawing cartoons. He returned to the university in 1954 and received a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1956. During this time, he decided to pursue a career in cartooning and so enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. After graduation he moved to New York City, where he was accepted into the Cooper Union and where his focus shifted dramatically to fine art. He received his diploma in 1959.
Wesselmann became one of the leading American Pop artists of the 1960s, rejecting abstract expressionism in favor of the classical representations of the nude, still life, and landscape. He created collages and assemblages incorporating everyday objects and advertising ephemera in an effort to make images as powerful as the abstract expressionism he admired. He is perhaps best known for his great "American Nude" series with their sensuous forms and intense colors. In the 1970s, Wesselmann continued to explore the ideas and media which had preoccupied him during the 1960s. Most significantly, his large "Standing Still Life" series, composed of free standing shaped canvases, showed small intimate objects on a grand scale. In 1980, Wesselmann now using the pseudonym Slim Stealingworth, wrote an autobiography documenting the evolution of his artistic work. He continued exploring shaped canvases (first exhibited in the 1960s) and began creating his first works in metal. He instigated the development of a laser-cutting application, which would allow him to make a faithful translation of his drawings in cut-out metal. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the artist expanded these themes, creating abstract three dimensional images that he described as "going back to what I had desperately been aiming for in 1959." He had indeed come full circle. In his final years, he returned to the female form in his "Sunset Nudes" series of oil paintings on canvas, whose bold compositions, abstract imagery, and sanguine moods often recall the odalisques of Henri Matisse.
Wesselmann worked in New York City for more than four decades. He lived in New York City with his wife, Claire, daughters Jenny and Kate, and son Lane. He died there on December 17, 2004.
Edited by Chris Sharp.
Texts by Chris Sharp and Sabrina Tarasoff.
 
published in November 2018
bilingual edition (English / French)
24 x 31,5 cm (softcover)
228 pages (color & b/w ill.)
 
55.00
 
ISBN : 978-88-6749-344-9
EAN : 9788867493449
 
in stock
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