Executed in 2002 in the twilight of Tom Wesselmann’s influential career, Sunset Nude #7 revisits with the refinement and experience of maturity the theme that first launched him into public consciousness: the nude. One of the most important groups of paintings since his landmark Great American Nudes of the 1960s, the iconic Sunset Nudes are the first complete group of nudes𝔉 to emerge from his studio in almost three decades. With an increasingly pared-down pictorial vocabulary, this series can be seen as the culmination of his career-long enquiry into modes of commercial and fine art image making.

One of the founders of American Pop Art, alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselmann has found continued expression in෴ the visual vocabulary of contemporary popular culture, deriving his iconography from consumer products and advertising billboards, seeking to divest art of its Abstract Expressionist pretensions and to reconnect it with everyday life. By returning to the fundamentals of classic art historical subject matter - the reclining nude, the landscape and the still life – and reinterpreting them to reflect the tastes and expectations of the American public of his day, Wesselmann redefined the lexis and praxis of art. The present work encompasses this triumvirate, zooming in on a figure leisurely reclining in an intimate interior, surrounded by the props and trophies of the American middle class. Through the window, a view over an idyllic beach taps into our shared desire for luxury, or rather reflects the generic desire projected on the consumer by the media.

Sunset Nude #7 is constructed of simplified and brightly coloured forms that speak of an era of rising consumerism in America, increased permissiveness and the use of sexuality to sell commercial products.  By homing in on the closely cropped female body, Wesselmann borrows the seductive strategies of advertising, incorporating the impact of billboard advertising into the realm of fine art. Wesselmann continues the process of simplification and dehumanization that he began earlier in his career by omitting any sense of skin texture, the eyes and nose, and focusing entirely on the erogenous zones.  This is echoed in the iconic bunch of roses that sit behind figure, which are loaded with sexual or pleasurable connotations, the deep red irresistibly drawing our gaze into a world of easy sensuality and pleasurable gratification.  The blatant nudity and intimate setting give the works a peepshow quality, but the model is deprived of a face to notice or challenge the viewer’s voyeurism. Wesselmann's nudes clearly show the influence of Matisse in their flowing curves and simple, bright colours, as well as a constant awareness of the tradition of the reclining nude in art history, from Titian’s Venuses to Manet’s Olympia. By taking traditio🐼n and imbuing it with his inimitable Pop sensibility, Wesselmann defines his unique contribution to the tradition of the nude in the canon of art history.