Henri Matisse, Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra), 1907, oil on canvas, Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland, BMA 1950.228 © Succession H. Matisse/ DACS 2020. Image: Mitro Hood, courtesy of The Baltimore Museum of Art.
Reverse Drawing: Bedroom Blonde with Irises, 1993, evinces Tom Wesselmann’s daring departure from prescribed artistic categories in the second half of the twentieth century. With a prolifc artistic career spanning fve decades, the artist turned away from the movement of Abstract Expressionism that was then dominating the American art scene, and instead directed his artistic practice towards a path that refected his own bold experimentality, most closely twined with American Pop art. A large-scale charcoal and pastel work on paper, Reverse Drawing: Bedroom Blonde with Irises relates to Wesselmann’s steel drawing series begun in 1983, and derives from a similarly titled cut-out steel piece from 1987. In this series, the artist intended to create works which appeared as if they were painted directly on the wall, with a tactile sensibility which could be felt by the viewer. A contemporary of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenberg, Wesselmann paved his own distinct path within American Pop by focusing his artistic practice on the nude fgure. ‘When I made the decision in 1959 that I was not going to be an abstract painter; that I was going to be a representational painter… I only got started by doing the opposite of everything I loved’, the artist said. ‘And in choosing representational painting, I decided to do, as my subject
‘I can sort of look back at whom I was awed by just by saying “Matisse and de Kooning”.’ Tom Wesselmann