She's a Rainbow:The Pop Art of Tom Wesselmann.

"Have you seen her all in gold? Like a queen in days of old. She shoots colors all around like a sunset going down. Have you seen a lady fairer?" - She's a Rainbow, The Rolling Stones.

'She's a Rainbow', from The Stones 1967 LP Their Satainc Majesties Request, doesn't just celebrate the beauty of a woman and how 'colourful' she is, it also wholeheartedly objectifies her. She is nothing but her beauty and her bright colours. In that respect, it's a perfect match for the paintings that Tom Wesselmann made towards the end of his life fifteen years ago.

Or so I say now. With the benefit of both hindsight and, thanks to a huge number of incredibly brave women, a keener sense of how objectification objectifies women and how patriarchal structures have become instituionalised and how they need forcibly changing. If I'd have been writing this around the time of Wesselmann's death in December 2004, it'd be a VERY different piece indeed.

Tom Wesselmann - Sunset Nude with Palm Trees (2003)

None of which is to say that She's a Rainbow is a bad song (it's not, it's a lovely song) and none of which is to say that Tom Wesselmann's Sunset Nude paintings are bad paintings. They're not. They're lovely paintings. Well, better than average anyway. I've seen better but I've definitely seen worse.

Almine Rech Gallery in Mayfair was a new space to me and Wesselmann, despite being long dead, was a new artist to me. So, eager to learn (as ever), I made sure I read the lengthy preamble about him before I entered the gallery space. I didn't get much from it. Apparently, towards the end of an artist's career "a devil-may-attitude inhabits their psyche" and their work becomes "more joyous", collage was at the heart of Wesselmann's art, and he was "a meticulous artist who followed a highly prescribed methodology in creating his art". The words were as dry and energy sapping as his art was vivacious and full of life.

Tom Wesselmann - Seven Up Beauty (2003)

Dismissive of the term 'pop art' throughout his career, Wesselmann was, nevertheless, seen as a practitioner of the form. That does him a slight disservice. Sure, there are elements of that genre but there also nods to fauvism, expressionism, and more than a tip of the hat towards the abstraction of Piet Mondria(a)n.

Seven Up Beauty looks like somebody has decorated the chassis of their car in a Mondrian style, had a prang that's bent it all out of shape, and then stuck it up on the gallery walls anyway. It's pleasant - but frustrating. It's also difficult to get a grasp on an artist who appears to have two very distinct styles. The 'sunset nudes' and the Mondrian fender benders.

Tom Wesselmann - Sunset Nudes, Floral Blanket (2003)

It's not a big show (just a couple of medium sized rooms fleshed out with a few maquettes, sketchbooks (see end of blog), plans, exhibition catalogues, photographs, and drawings) so it's not like you can really get a handle on Wesselmann with such a tiny, and date specific, selection of his work. 

A simple Google image search reveals there's much more to his art (and leaves you in no doubt as to why that art was considered 'pop') and makes you think it'd be good to see a full show of his work. That's a job for somewhere like the Royal Academy or Tate Modern or even one of the larger commercial galleries like the Victoria Miro. Almine Rech, one presumes, are primarily in the business of flogging this stuff. I'm surprised they even let me in!

Tom Wesselmann - Sunset Nude with Matisse Odalisque (2003)

But what of Wesselmann's nudes? With their bright red nipples, their dark brown pubic triangles, and (in several cases) their lack of a face. There's something of Gauguin about them, some kind of exoticising, but in Wesselman's case he clearly didn't need to travel to the South Seas to find mystery. Like the sinister old perv, Degas, Wesselmann just saw women as, somehow, different.

They don't look like real women (quite clearly), they're not particularly erotic, and there's little difference in the way Wesselmann paints a woman than in the way he paints a piece of fruit. In Sunset Nude with Matisse Odalisque he's lined up a selection of juicy, succulent fruit next to one of his nudes as if almost to reflect her. Perhaps that's his representation of a man? Two balls and a dick. Who knows?

Tom Wesselmann - Three Step II (2003)

Tom Wesselmann - Three Step (2013)

Swings and roundabouts though. Each concern about objectification is mostly offset by Wesselmann's wonderful use of colour and that was my come away from the show. Tom Wesselmann (born, Cincinatti in 1931, died New York City, 2004) was a country music fan who, in his approach to women, was very much a man of his age. He wasn't the most original artist (or thinker) that ever lived but he was, without any shadow of a doubt, a very colourful one.

"Coming, colours in the air".

Tom Wesselmann - Exhibition Detail (2004)