A tip to start with: download the FLV app and take headphones with you, as there is a nice podcast that guides you through the exhibition.

First of all, I found it interesting to trace Wesselmann’s development as an artist. The exhibition is organised chronologically so that it is easy to
how he revisits and develops motifs – especially between the 60s and 70s. The ‘Still Lifes’ from the 60s reappear ten years later, extremely oversized (the glasses in #61 are seven metres long!) and as a mixture of painting and sculpture.

The variety of genres and techniques used by Wesselmann is fascinating. Painting, sculpture, collage, silhouette, interior design, photorealistic, classical, abstract, sketched or stylised, he masters it all. It is particularly exciting when a work combines several elements. “Still Life #30” (1963) can serve as an example. A kitchen table in front of a window with a view of New York (painted with oil, acrylic and varnish) with typical food from the 1960s (collage of advertising motifs), a (real) fridge door, plastic replicas of 7-up bottles, all topped off with a
Picasso on the wall. Which brings me to the next highlight…

These oversized ‘Still Lifes’ were a highlight for me. I suddenly felt like Alice in Wonderland. The sculptural design (each object was cut into shape and the shapes were spatially offset) and the realistic depiction with shadows and light reflections did the rest.

Picasso was not the only artist that Tom Wesselmann admired and copied. Various pictures in the ‘Great American Nude’ series include, for example, reproductions of paintings by van Gogh, Renoir, Matisse and… the Mona Lisa. Matisse seems to have played a special role here. Not only did Wesselmann incorporate Matisse’s signature into his imitations in true style, his late work (80s to 2000s) also includes more than 100 silhouette-like works made of aluminium and steel.

One year before his death, he painted two paintings in the Matisse style: ‘Sunset Nude with Matisse Apples on Pink Tablecloth’ and ‘Sunset Nude with Wesselmann’.

Pop Art artists were rare – so it’s all the better that the exhibition shows some of them. What I found most impressive was ‘Skin Crime 3 (Givenchy 318)’ by Sylvie Fleury, which was created in 1997, long after the end of the Pop Art movement. It is a flattened car painted with nail varnish (the very shade mentioned in the title). I wonder how long that took?

I also liked the ‘Rhinestones’ (1963) made of fabric by Jann Haworth and the ‘Bombs in Love’ (1964) by Kiki Kogelnik. Mickalene Thomas was inspired by Wesselmann’s nudes to create portraits of black women decorated with sequins, rhinestones and semi-precious stones, which she made especially for the exhibition.

But we also find iconic works by Andy Warhal, Jasper Jones, Roy Lichtensteins and Jeff Koons.

Wesselmann took the bright colours typical of Pop Art to the extreme with the presentation of his ‘Mouths’ and ‘Smokers’.

The bright red and pink mouths, in which the cigarette really seems to glow, hung in front of a black background and really popped 😉. This was exactly what he had intended, because as one of the curators reports in the accompanying podcast (available via the FLV app), precise hanging instructions are noted on the back of the works.