Tom Wesselmann - Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Friday, November 16, 2012 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist
    Private collection, New York
    James Goodman Gallery, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    Personality would only be distraction from the simple fact of nudity. When I create physical details like lips or nipples, they are of importance for the erotic simplifcation. From the beginning I never gave them faces. A face gives personal touch to a sexual act, makes it a portrait act. And that, I don’t like at all.
    TOM WESSELMANN

    (Tom Wesselmann quoted in S. Stealingworth, Tom Wesselmann, 1980, New York, pp. 23-24).

  • Artist Biography

    Tom Wesselmann

    American • 1931 - 2004

    As a former cartoonist and leading figure of the Pop Art movement, Tom Wesselmann spent many years of his life repurposing popular imagery to produce small to large-scale works that burst with color. Active at a time when artists were moving away from the realism of figurative painting and growing increasingly interested in abstraction, Wesselmann opted for an antithetical approach: He took elements of city life that were both sensual and practical and represented them in a way that mirrored Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol's own methodologies.

    Wesselmann considered pop culture objects as exclusively visual elements and incorporated them in his works as pure containers of bold color. This color palette became the foundation for his now-iconic suggestive figurative canvases, often depicting reclining nudes or women's lips balancing a cigarette.

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196

Seascape Study, Tongue Out

1964
liquitex and pencil on board
10 3/4 x 9 3/4 in. (27.3 x 24.8 cm)
Signed and dated "Wesselmann 64" lower right; further signed and dated "Wesselmann 65" upper right.

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Sold for $98,500

Contemporary Art Day Sale

16 November 2012
New York