To celebrate its tenth anniversary, the Fondation Louis Vuitton presents one of the first exhibitions of its 2024-2025 artistic season, devoted to pop art, with the work of one of its leading figures: Tom Wesselmann.

From its very beginnings, pop art has transfigured the symbols of mass culture, becoming one of the major artistic movements of the 1960s. Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and James Rosenquist are among the key figures, but we mustn't forget Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004). This Cincinnati, Ohio-born artist, painter and cartoonist is celebrated at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in a major exhibition on pop art, featuring a selection of 150 paintings and other works.

EXPLOSION OF GRAPHIC ELEMENTS

The man who quickly distinguished himself from Abstract Expressionism developed his own style, creating collages and assemblages incorporating all manner of objects, advertisements and everyday images. His work is a game of deconstructing and reassembling the American dream. Tom Wesselmann has taken up traditional painting themes (nudes, still life, landscape), integrated multimedia elements (light, movement, sound, video) into his work, and broadened the spectrum of his practice with his Standing Still Lifes, a cross between painting and installation.

This representative of pop art never ceased to push creative boundaries, experimenting with laser cutting, among other things. But he also drew on the work of Matisse, one of his greatest influences. His series The Great American Nude, considered his best-known, continues to stylize traditional subjects, setting up the French painter's odalisques as pop icons.

TOM WESSELMANN AND OTHERS

With his bold approach to color and form, Tom Wesselmann made his mark on the American art scene. With his works and the history of pop art, the Fondation Louis Vuitton brings together and confronts 35 artists of different generations and nationalities who share a "pop" sensibility. A look at "from its Dadaist roots to its contemporary extensions, from the 1920s to the present day ".

Co-curators Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer contextualize his work within the evolution of this movement, which was then active on both sides of the Atlantic, offering perspectives between past, present and future. The tour, spread over the building's four floors, reveals itself as a "hypothesis of a pop that crosses the ages", all the more so in this "double form" between retrospective and thematic exhibition.

POP ART AND BEYOND

Tom Wesselmann's art is thus immersed in the intellectual and aesthetic climate of Pop, the better to develop a more general theme. The co-curators compare and contrast his Great American Nudes with the icons of his generation (Evelyne Axell, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Marisol, Marjorie Strider, Andy Warhol), his collages with their Dadaist roots in Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, and his staging of consumer goods as a precursor to the staging of commodities in the age of globalization by Jeff Koons and Ai Weiwei.

The exhibition complements the analysis of his intimate and domestic nudes and scenes with the work of a new generation, such as Derrick Adams, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Mickalene Thomas.

" POP FOREVER, TOM WESSELMANN &..."
FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON
8, AVENUE DU MAHATMA GANDHI, PARIS 16E
FROM OCTOBER 17, 2024 TO FEBRUARY 24, 2025
FONDATIONLOUISVUITTON.FR