Tom Wesselmann, Bedroom Blonde with Irises (Charcoal), 1987, enamel on cut-out steel, 53.5 x 83 inches, courtesy of Haunch of Venison, New York.
“Tom Wesselmann Draws” is an unparalleled opportunity to view the drawings of the late artist that spans nearly four and half decades. Many of the 108 works have never been seen outside of the artist’s studio in Greenwich Village. The Haunch of Venison show in New York ended last weekend, but the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Art in For Lauderdale in October and to the Kreeger Museum in Washington D.C. in 2011.
The show was originally conceived by Wesselmann, his wife Claire, and Haunch of Venison’s director Emilio Steinberger in 2003. The following year, the artist sadly passed away at the age of 73 and the show was put on hold. Five years later, Claire felt ready to revisit the project with Steinberger. Wesselmann’s definition of drawing was broad, encompassing his work on paper, canvas, maquettes, plastic, and steel-cuts. Wrote Wesselmann in 2003, “I see a show that will enlarge the common perception of what a drawing is to a surprising and rewarding degree.”
The result offers us not only an expanded understanding of what a drawing can be, but a rare window into the artist’s process. Walking through the show, we see how almost all of Wesselmann’s paintings were born from drawing after drawing. We find several studies and drawings for his series “Great American Nude" and the process by which he perfected the outline of a breast, the mouth, the cigarette, practicing over and over on one sheet, circling the best.
Tom Wesselmann, Study for Great American Nude, 1964, pencil and liquitex on paper, 8.75 x 11.63 inches, courtesy of Haunch of Venison, New York.
“Tom Wesselmann Draws” is somewhat chronological, but the artist wanted it to feel more like “a continuity of drawings as they occurred.” We see him move from charcoal on paper to charcoal on the backside of formed plastic in the sixties – his first move into 3D drawing – and then in the seventies to charcoal on gesso on canvas with Drawing Version of Bedroom Painting #24 (1972). In the eighties, Wesselmann made what he calls “the biggest departure in my work,” with his aluminum and steel cut works that he considered drawings in metal. “The original premise was to make drawings in steel as thought they magically had been drawn in steel…and I was intrigued by the fact that you could pick up a drawing by the lines and hold it.”
When I visited Haunch of Venison in mid-December I had the pleasure of running into Claire. “It’s been a long time coming,” she said. “We [Tom and I] had a lot of things to tell people I don’t think they were aware of and we tried to do it relatively, [showing] how connections make connections back and forth like he always did.” You can tell waking through the show, the care that went into choosing the works. There is a strong emotional current that runs through the show knowing that his wife put such effort into its production. Wesselmann was known for his nudes and was at first criticized and labeled a chauvinist in the sixties, but Claire was the model he most often used. He was a young man just back from the war, newly married and fascinated by his sexuality, by the female form, and by his wife.
Tom Wesselmann, Study for Still Life #46, 1964, pencil and liquitex on paper, 42 x 53 inches, courtesy of Haunch of Venison, New York.
