Label Text:
Pop artist Tom Wesslemann turned repeatedly throughout his career to the subject of the female nude in an ongoing series he called “The Great American Nude.” As this silkscreen print suggests, Wesslemann conceived of the nude as a figural type marked by pink skin and bright blonde hair, characteristics clearly signifying Anglo-European descent. Whereas many famous nudes from European paintings (a tradition that the artist playfully parodies) appear in respectable guises like Venus, this “Great American” nude is explicitly sexual in a supine pose purposefully recalling 20th-century pornography for heterosexual men. Thus objectified, the nude possesses a disconcerting combination of absence (her body is fragmented) and excess (her nipples are unnaturally pronounced). A floral and fruit still life symbolizes fecundity and domesticates the scene, while the large blue star hovering overhead trumpets the subject’s “American-ness.”
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1971.47 |
