Tom Wesselmann’s Nudes and Renaissance Nudes:
Comparison and Contrast
Melissa Kitko
12/10/01
Arth 284F
When looking at Tom Wesselmann’s Great American Nude series, one might be inclined to think that his work was something new and shocking for its time. This point can be argued both ways since Renaissance art included many nudes, some of which were commissioned specifically to be erotic. However, Tom Wesselmann certainly did produce art that shocked his contemporaries to a certain degree and was censored on multiple occasions due to the sexual nature of his artwork.
This trend of erotic art was not new
to Wesselmann’s time. During the
Renaissance, Titian, a Venetian painter, painted the Venus of Urbino (Figure 1).
Completed in 1538, it was purchased the same year by a twenty-four-year-old
duke, Guidobaldo della Rovere. Guidobaldo
had just married a ten-year-old girl four years ago and it can be suggested
that he was interested in purchasing the portrait of, “the naked woman,” simply
because
his own wife was not an adult yet, and he needed a, “consoling vision of adult sexual
enticement.”[1] The painting had not even been thought of as
Venus until thirty years later when Vasari named it that in his Lives.[2] Venus, at the time, was a common figure in
artwork since she was the goddess of love and beauty. Here, her pose, reclining and stretched out with one hand resting
on her pudendum, can be perceived in two different ways. One is that the hand functions as an aid to
draw the viewer’s gaze to the whole painting, creating a tighter composition. The other is that the woman is or had been
engaging in a sexual act, which Renaissance medical advice had encouraged
females to do in order to conceive.[3] Lying on a bed indoors, the woman can be
thought of as only a courtesan lying nude in a sort of brothel. A deeper allegorical meaning sets her up as
the goddess Venus having descended into the interior of a home, symbolizing
lawful marital bliss and fertility.[4] The gaze of the woman is also something of
interest. Unlike other paintings of
reclining nudes who are usually painted as sleeping, eyes closed, the woman of
this painting gazes out at the viewer with an inviting and provocative look.[5]
Titan’s Venus was most likely
influenced by Giorgione’s Venus Asleep
(Figure 2), painted around 1510.[6] Giorgione painted the woman with her eyes
closed, asleep, which can be thought of as a way to make the subject of the
painting hidden and anonymous.[7] She most likely had been viewed, in this sense,
as a woman who was sexually fulfilled, also 
allowing for the voyeuristic instincts of
those viewing the painting; catching a nude woman asleep in a field. On the other hand, she can be seen as a
symbol of the innocence of un-awakened desire.[8] The background, a pastoral scene with
rolling hills, adds another possible interpretation to the painting. This fertile landscape suggests to the
viewer that the woman is also fertile and the curves in the hills accentuate
the woman’s curves.[9]
These two paintings were commonly displayed in bedrooms of men and similar images can be found inside the lids of wedding chests. However, the Venus of Urbino was most likely seen as a sort of pinup girl to its owner, Guidobaldo. In fact, there was actually a demand for portraits of erotic nudes, and men were known to commission artists to produce similar paintings for enjoyment by men in their bedrooms. These paintings were most likely purchased for their overtly sexual appeal and not for their allegorical meaning. One example of this can be seen with Cardinal Farnese. Upon seeing Guidobaldo’s latest acquisition, the Venus of Urbino, he rushed off to have a similar erotic nude painted for himself.[10] It can be inferred that the popularity of these erotic nudes amongst men created a market for other such paintings, and artists were making their money by painting what was demanded by those who would buy their paintings rather than what they wanted to paint.[11]
Almost four hundred years later, artists are still painting nudes. Tom Wesselmann, an artist who was active in the Pop Art era, created a series of nudes called the Great American Nude series. In this series, he combines the classical nude with the newer pinup girls of his own time.[12] He uses sexual imagery in his works as a means of truth telling to point out social hypocrisy and prudery.[13] Advertising of the time included many images of young women, and companies used eroticism to sell their products. From this standpoint, Wesselmann uses his art to mock American life and the American dream.
Unlike the
Renaissance paintings, Wesselmann’s nudes have no 
facial
features other than the mouth, so the gaze that was important with the
Renaissance paintings is now gone, rendering the body as the most important
element of the work.[14] The women in his works function as what
female viewers could identify as a body that would arouse the desire of males;
the sexually available woman. Commonly,
Wesselmann’s nudes were in environments akin to those seen in cartoons in
magazines like Playboy, such as the
nude in a public space like a 
cocktail party.[15] When viewed by males, Wesselmann’s nudes
allowed the viewer to be voyeuristic just like males viewing the Venus of Urbino or the Venus Asleep, however females were
expected to take into account the homeliness of the setting and the woman’s
domesticity.[16]
The nudes themselves and the imagery that is common to most of the nudes in the series is a subject of interest. As can be seen in Wesselmann’s Great American Nude, No. 57 (Figure 3), the figure of the woman is painted a pink color and has erect nipples, tan lines, and a mouth open in ecstasy. In the background are two blue stars behind the figure’s head, a reference to America. She leans on a leopard print chair which is commonly seen in photographs of women in men’s magazines.[17] The jar of flowers, anemones, and the two oranges placed side by side close to her breasts are sexual images signifying her sexual organs and breasts respectively.[18] Painted in this manner, the nude looks like pinups from photographic pornography. These nudes are the stereotypical ideal of female sexuality, including imagery such as the oranges and anemones which also portray the woman as used and abused by the consumer society she is a part of, reduced to object and appetite.[19]
In
another example, Great American Nude, No.
48 (Figure 4), the nude is seen in a bedroom setting with real objects
juxtaposed on the painting. The
painting includes a real radiator, window, and table. This is an earlier example of Wesselmann’s nudes series, and
shows a more domestic view of the woman, placed inside, on a bed, with other domestic
objects around her. Similar imagery can
be found in the fruit on the windowsill and the flowers painted into the 
background as well as the flowers on the
little table. The image of the woman here
is threatening to male viewers because of her open sexuality and power of
reproduction which had commonly been clothed and restricted.[20] The position of this figure in this painting
has been likened to the Venus of Urbino. She is reclining in a similar pose, but does
not have any facial features to draw the viewer’s gaze in to the painting
seductively. Her only facial feature is
her seductive red lips, showing a slight smile.
For Tom Wesselmann, these paintings were also a part of his personal life. His first marriage had just ended and he had fallen in love with Claire Selley in 1959. Claire was willing to pose nude for him, even in sexually explicit positions, and he began exploring his renewed sex life by painting sexual images of women.[21] At this same time, he had also started seeing a Freudian psychoanalyst who helped him analyze his dreams. Although the artist denies any relation between these sessions and his artwork, it is clear that the Freudian views from his psychoanalyst helped him assess his own sexuality which in turn, he displayed in his artwork.[22] His works have been compared to the photographs in men’s magazines like Playboy in the past, but Wesselmann consciously strove to be even more sexually explicit than the magazines. In fact, showing genitals in magazines was illegal at the time that Wesselmann was painting his nudes, and his obvious focus on genitals was absolutely unheard of in any magazines or publications of the time.[23]
Tom Wesselmann’s Great American Nudes series were not intended only for male viewers and were not commissioned as such. They were displayed in public galleries and in the homes of collectors who were male bachelors or married couples. On the other hand, the Renaissance nudes were displayed usually in the bedrooms of males, intended only for the male viewers. Because the Renaissance nudes could be seen in multiple ways, as a sexual female or as the goddess Venus, they probably were not as shocking as Wesselmann’s nudes. Wesselmann intended to shock his viewers and make them think about female sexuality and how females were being distorted at that time by how they were portrayed in the new consumer society.
The figure of the female nude has been a popular subject for paintings throughout history. There are many similarities and differences between the different nudes and how they were painted by different artists as well as how they were perceived by the age they were painted in and how future generations viewed them. Tom Wesselmann was certainly not the first to paint the nude female figure as an object of sexual desire, and he certainly will not be the last.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bohm-Duchen, Monica. The Nude: Themes in Art. New York: Rizzoli International
Publications, Inc., 1991.
This is a book on the nude through history in art. The book contains illustrations and a section on Wesselmann and both Renaissance works.
“Dirty Pictures.” ARTnews. V. 80 (Feb. 1981): p. 12-13.
This short article contains information about the process involved in the printing of Wesselmann’s book and how he had to work around censorship issues.
Freund, Charles Paul. “Buying into Culture.” Reason 1 June 1998
<http://search.britannica.com/magazine/article?content_id=72462&
query=renaissance>.
In this article, the writer explains how the Venus of Urbino was perceived by its owners as well as how other paintings of nudes were commissioned. A great resource for the classical nudes side of the comparison and contrast.
Hunter, Sam. Tom Wesselmann. New York: Rizzoli, 1994.
A book about Tom Wesselmann including criticism and interpretation. It is useful because it is not written by Tom himself, but by a critic of his work.
McCarthy, David. “Tom Wesselmann and the Americanization of the Nude,
1961-1963.” Smithsonian Studies in American Art. V. 4(Summer-Fall 1990):
p. 102-127.
This is a close analytical study of Tom Wesselmann and his nudes, and it goes in depth into the imagery used by Wesselmann as well as his personal life.
Saunders, Gill. The Nude. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989.
In this book, Gill Saunders discusses the figure of the nude as perceived through history. Contains illustrations.
Turner, James Grantham, ed. Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe:
Institutions, Texts, Images. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
This book shows the renaissance side of the nude and how sexuality and gender were perceived in the renaissance. Includes illustrations.
Wesselmann, Tom. Tom Wesselmann. New York: Abbeville Press, 1980.
A book that includes many images that can be scanned and included in the paper for the purpose of demonstration. Also, written by Tom Wesselmann about himself, his own intentions.
Wesselmann, Tom. “Oral History Interview with Tom Wesselmann at his Studio on
the Bowery.” Archives of American Art
http://artarchives.si.edu/oralhist/wessel84.htm. (14 November 2001).
This rather lengthy interview contains many references to Wesselmann’s nudes. Wesselmann mentions about what they meant to him and how he perceived they affected the world around him.
Whiting, Cécile. A Taste for Pop: Pop Art, Gender, and Consumer Culture. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
The chapter on Wesselmann will be very helpful because it brings in the issue of gender as related to his nudes and their impact.