Long Delayed Nude 1967 - 1975

"Long Delayed Nude" by Tom Wesselmann feels like a blast of Pop Art cheesecake, airbrushed and slick. I'm imagining Wesselmann in his studio, wrestling with this image, layering on the paint to get that hyper-real, almost plastic-like skin tone. There's something so audacious about the way he crops and zooms, turning a seemingly intimate scene into a bold, graphic statement. The lips are parted, the colors are hot, but everything is flattened, streamlined. It's like he's saying, "Here's desire, but don't get too close." I wonder if he was thinking about the history of nudes in painting, maybe even poking fun at it. Like, “Okay, here's my nude, but I'm gonna make it so over-the-top and stylized that you can't take it too seriously.” It's like a painting that knows it's a painting, winking at you from across the room. And that wink is part of the fun.