Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &…
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
From October 16th, 2024 until February 24th, 2025
The exhibition focuses on the work of one of the greatest interpreters and representatives of Pop Art, Tom Wesselmann. The movement was born as a challenge to the traditions of historical fine art concepts, of classical and elegant aesthetic canons, which were almost limiting for the artists of the time who instead felt the need to find a unique and personal artistic and creative reaction. The images, which become the starting point for this expression, are taken from mass culture, popular culture, advertising, comics and any kind of commercial work. The exhibition consists of a selection of 150 works and paintings by Wesselmann, juxtaposed with another 35 by artists who differ in generation and nationality but are related to the pop sensibility. The curators do not refer to the exhibition as a mere retrospective of the artist, but rather an exhibition that contextualises his work within art history, offering fascinating perspectives on Pop Art past, present and even future. The subjects of his work are more often than not recurring, almost obsessively so, as is the everyday that returns to our lives in a habitual and usual way. The banality of the everyday, however, becomes a supreme source of beauty, an exaltation of the common object in its most vivid colours, in its most traced lines. His works are solid and calibrated, real and necessary.
opening image: Tom Wesselmann, Still Life #36, 1964.
The aesthetics of Pop Art immediately delineated the movement as a projection aimed far beyond the mere artistic field, it shortened the distance between art and popular culture, fruition became for all. Comics, advertising, cinema, tabloids become the subjects of these artists. The paintings are no longer works of art but collages of photographic images glued together or sometimes reproduced, a melting pot of figures, subjects, colours that allows them to go straight to the heart of the observer. Pop Art broadens the horizons of limiting and static visions, both in terms of subjects and pictorial and production techniques. The exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton spans all four floors of the building, organised in chronological order and in relation to his work, using his work as a starting point for a broader reflection on the entire international Pop Art movement. Globalisation, commerce, everyday life, generation, consumer goods, culture. These are the keywords of an investigation whose beginning is known but whose end is not yet. A precise thematic vision. A collection of visionary sensibilities. A mirror of modern and contemporary society, whether from the past or today.
For further information fondationlouisvuitton.fr.
