Great American Nude No. 66
1965
The female nude was a particularly fetishized image for consumption. In 1953, Playboy magazine launched its first issue and peddled certain pin-up conventions to an upper-class market. In Wesselmann's Great American Nude paintings, he replaces the Western canon of idealized female nudes with a standardized, mass-produced image. Here the body of allegorical beauty is reimagined as a consumer good -- without eyes, the female body remains unsettlingly lifeless, like a billboard.
- Catharina Manchanda, Jon & Mary Shirley Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, Pop Departures, October 9, 2014 - January 11, 2015
Oil and acrylic on canvas
73 x 73 1/2 in. (185.4 x 186.7 cm)
Gift of the Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum
2020.15.39
Provenance: The artist; [Green Gallery, New York]; purchased by Virginia and Bagley Wright, Seattle, Washington, June 10, 1965