{"id":803,"date":"2016-10-16T06:30:28","date_gmt":"2016-10-16T06:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/?p=803"},"modified":"2016-10-20T20:23:07","modified_gmt":"2016-10-20T20:23:07","slug":"803","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wow\/803","title":{"rendered":"Work Of the Week – Tom Wesselmann “Wildflower Bouquet”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
\"Wildflower<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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TOM WESSELMANN<\/b><\/span>
\nWildflower Bouquet<\/i><\/span>
\n1987<\/span>
\nEnamel on laser-cut steel<\/span>
\n38 x 24 3\/4 in.
\nEdition of 30<\/span>
\nSigned and numbered on bottom and on verso<\/span><\/p>\n

About This\u00a0Work:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Tom Wesselmann was born on February 23, 1931 in Cincinnati, OH.
\nDuring his youth, he was called up for military service due to the Korea war. Being discontented with his situation, he began to draw cartoons at that time. After military service, he moved to New York City to attend The Cooper Union, graduating in in 1959 with a diploma in fine art.<\/span><\/p>\n

In New York, he started earning his living by working as a cartoonist for several journals and magazines as well as by teaching at a high school in Brooklyn.<\/span>
\nAt the end of the 1950’s, he created a series of collages in small format, that are now being regarded as precursors of the later series “Still life” in big format and “Great American Nudes”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though he disagreed with being labeled a \u201cPop\u201d artist, Wesselmann’s work is considered belonging to the Pop art movement. During his artistic career, he experimented with materials and imagery; both collage and sculpture found their way into his assemblages. When he was not working on stylized female nudes (these works are actually what he is best known for), common objects were the main theme of his art work. This is the case of this work of the week, Wildflower Bouquet.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Wildflower Bouquet<\/i> is one of Wesselmann’s famous so-called Steel Drawings.<\/span>
\nIn the early 1980’s, Wesselmann had the idea to capture the spontaneity of his sketches, complete with false lines and errors, and realize them in the permanence of metal. Wesselmann sought a way to draw in steel. He envisioned the illusion of lifting the lines from his drawings and placing them directly on the wall. Once installed, the pieces appear to be drawn on the wall.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the invention of the Steel Drawings, Wesselmann began to focus more on drawing for the sake of drawing. For the first time he was approaching art on a new basis, where the scribble was the final product. The drawings that would be transferred into steel were selected carefully and their crisp outlines resonated with the immediacy of a neon sign.<\/span>
\nWhat excited Wesselmann the most about these new works was that his intimate sketches could be magnified to a monumental size, yet somehow, could still maintain their free and spontaneous quality.<\/span><\/p>\n

The drawings were usually the preliminary sketches to his other works, like paintings or prints. However, when making a comparison between the same image done in two different media, for example a steel cut-out and a painting, one can notice how the artist subtly played changes on his formal language in the treatment of the outlines, or in the spaces in between.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wesselmann was also deeply influenced by Matisse, who had long been a source of inspiration for him. In the metal works, Wesselmann can be understood to have devised his own equivalent to the paper cut-outs that had marked Matisse’s equally bold and life-affirming last phase.<\/span><\/p>\n

The steel drawings represent Wesselmann’s best-known technical innovation.<\/span>
\nHis idea preceded the available technology for mechanically laser-cutting metal with the accuracy that Wesselmann needed. He invested a lot of time in the development of a system that could accomplish this, embarking on a year-long journey with metalworks fabricator Alfred Lippincott to develop a technique that could cut steel with the precision that he needed. Laser-cut paper and metal are materials now utilized by countless artists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wesselmann\u2019s Steel Drawings caused both excitement and confusion in the art world. After acquiring a piece in 1985, the Whitney Museum of American Art wrote to Wesselmann asking why he had labeled the work a drawing and not a sculpture. His response was that while he considered it a pure drawing, it was \u201can example of life not necessarily being as simple as one might wish<\/i>\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TOM WESSELMANN Wildflower Bouquet 1987 Enamel on laser-cut steel 38 x 24 3\/4 in. Edition of 30 Signed and numbered on bottom and on verso About This\u00a0Work: Tom Wesselmann was born on February 23, 1931 in Cincinnati, OH. During his … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[291,16,79,428,14,84,25,248,8,83,9,15,102,73,23,46,47,56,429,200,203,427,88,222,17,89],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsfineart.com\/gallery-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}