Tom Wesselmann - His Voice And Vision - john wilmerding

. .

Résumé :
Tom Wesselmann was often seen as the most unabashedly sexual of the canonical pop artists. Yet the blatancy of his highly stylized figures, in their cool, stick rendering, makes them subtle and opens up his images to multiple readings. This new volume with close to three hundred color illustrations covers the richness and wit of Tom Wesselmann's career up to his death in 2004 and brings him into the limelight he deserves. Noted author John Wilmerding captures the spirit of the artist by interviewing family members and reviewing day-to-day journals. In doing so he gives a fuller understanding of Wesselmann's life, family, and working habits of the artist. He places Wesselmann's career within the history of the Pop art movement and discusses his lifelong dialogue with Henri Matisse. Like Matisse, Wesselmann was a brilliant colorist and draftsman and fused together the two great traditions of color and line. In his late career, Wesselmann embraces a new direction, with new subject matter (landscapes and still lifes) and new techniques (painting relief sculptures, or shaped "drop-out" canvases), many of which are reproduced here for the first time. His exploration of laser cut metal drawings crosses the foundations of painting, sculpture, and printmaking.

Biographie:
John Wilmerding is Emeritus Professor of American Art at Princeton University and adjunct curator in the Princeton University Art Museum. He is also an advisor w the planned Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. He is chairman of the board of trustees of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and a trustee of the Guggenheim Museum. Formerly, he served as Senior Curator and Deputy Director of the National Gallery. A noted scholar of American art and cultural studies, he is the author of monographs on Fitz Henry Lane, John F. Peto, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Eakins. Most recently he has written books on Richard Estes (Rizzoli, 2006) and Robert Indiana (Rizzoli, 2006).