EXPO TOM WESSELMANN "The promise of happiness"

June 29, 2018 January 6, 2019

NMNM - Villa Paloma
56, boulevard of the exotic garden

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Tom Wesselmann, the promise of happiness designed by Chris Sharp and with the scientific coordination of Cristiano Raimondi presented on the three floors of the Villa Paloma in Monaco from June 29, 2018 to 6 January 2019 brings together twenty-five works of art - paintings, drawings, and sculptures - made between 1963 and 1993.

Drawing its title from the famous assertion of Stendhal, "the beauty is that the promise of happiness", this research is devoted to very specific aspects of the production of Tom Wesselmann including sexuality at times Victorian and post-Victorienne, the self-determination of women and the report of these two subjects with the material abundance of post-war. It is also a question of the relationship of beauty and erotic with this "promise."

This exhibition focuses on the portrait that Wesselmann draws up of women - which was often the subject of controversy because of her alleged objectification - and offer a much more nuanced analysis of the report between the artist and the female subject. So she brought some form of self-determination feminine, symptomatic of the historic turning point of the post-war period and the passage of a repressive Victorian era to an economy of abundance and consumerism; These two last taking literally body in the work of Tom Wesselmann.

Long regarded as one of the major protagonists of the American Pop Art and one of its greatest innovators on the formal level, Wesselmann's crucial contribution to the movement is source of debate for decades. Exposure tends to clarify this issue, register the tremendous and pervasive contribution of the artist in the taboo subject of sexuality, his representation and his inseparable link with the promise induced by the cultural wealth, unlimited physical and economic of post-war American society.

The exhibition catalogue, edited by MOSS Publishing, will include texts of Chris Sharp and Sabrina Tarasoff.

This exhibition is supported by The Estate of Tom Wesselmann.