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Moses Myers House

The home of the first permanent Jewish residents of Norfolk, this historic house offers a glimpse of the life of a wealthy early 19th-century merchant family.
More about the house

Jean Outland Chrysler Library

With an extensive collection of more than 106,000 rare and unique volumes relating to the history of art, the Jean Outland Chrysler Library is one of the most significant art libraries in the South. More about the Library

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Historic Houses

Located on Freemason St. —

Open Saturday and Sunday

Noon–5 p.m.

Jean Outland Chrysler Library

By Appointment

Tuesday-Thursday

10:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.

Moses Myers House

The oldest Jewish home in America open to the public as a museum offers a glimpse of the life of an early 19th century merchant family.
More about the house

About the Library

With an extensive collection of more than 106,000 rare and unique volumes relating to the history of art, the Jean Outland Chrysler Art Library is one of the most significant art libraries in the South. More about the library

Willoughby-Baylor House

Completed in 1794, this former home now presents a mix of art and artifacts. See what's on view

Located in Norfolk

One Memorial Place,
Norfolk, VA
Get Directions

While You're Here

Visit our Museum Shop
and the Wisteria Cafe.

Perry Glass Studio

A state-of-art facility on the Museum’s campus. See a free glassmaking demo Tuesdays–Sunday at noon. Like what you see? Take a class with us! More about the Studio

Moses Myers House

The home of the first permanent Jewish residents of Norfolk, this historic house offers a glimpse of the life of a wealthy early 19th-century merchant family.
More about the house

Jean Outland Chrysler Library

With an extensive collection of more than 106,000 rare and unique volumes relating to the history of art, the Jean Outland Chrysler Library is one of the most significant art libraries in the South. More about the Library

Weddings & Event Rentals

The perfect place for your big day or special event. Get the details

Take a tour

We offer a number of tours on different topics. More about tours

Jean Outland Chrysler Library

Visit one of the most significant art libraries in the South. More about the library

About the Chrysler

Our story spans well over 100 years. See where we began, how we grew, and where we're going. Explore our history

News and Announcements

See what's happening at the Museum, read Chrysler Magazine, and find our Media Center. Read now

Location

745 Duke Street
Norfolk, VA 23510
757-333-6299

Always Free Parking

Get Directions

Third Thursdays

Live art performances monthly.
See the archive

Studio Team

Meet the brilliant minds behind the Studio.
See the team

Studio Assistantship Program

Further your career and join us in Norfolk.
Find out more

The Masterpiece Society

Learn about this innovative group of museum supporters.
Meet the Masterpiece Society

Planned Giving

Help ensure the long-term success of the Museum.
Learn about planned giving

Collections Menu
Bedroom Painting #15

Bedroom Painting #15

Artist: Tom Wesselmann (American, 1931-2004)
Date: 1968-70
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
Overall: 84 1/4 x 119 1/4 in. (214 x 302.9 cm)
Classification: Modern art
Credit Line: Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Copyright: © Estate of Tom Wesselmann / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Object number: 77.420
Terms
  • Orange
  • Photograph
  • Rose
  • Pillow
  • Tom Wesselmann
  • Self portrait
  • Foot
  • Blue
  • White
  • Orange
  • Brown
  • Yellow
  • Red
  • Gray
  • Flesh
  • Pop art
  • New York
Not on view
DescriptionThis oil on canvas painting is irregulary-shaped and combines still-life objects with a woman's foot with painted toenails. The foot lines the bottom edge of the canvas, the ball of the foot resting on a round, yellow pillow. An orange, a rose, a portrait of a lover (self-portrait of Wesselmann) is in the background. The contour of the canvas is shaped to fit the objects depicted.

Exhibition History"New Work by Wesselmann," Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, N.Y., April 8 - May 2, 1970. (Exh. cat. no. 19)
"Three Hundred Years of American Art in the Chrysler Museum," Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, Va., March 1 - July 4, 1976. (Exh. cat. p. 227)
"American Figure Painting: 1950-1980," Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., October 16 - November 30, 1980.
"Remix: A Fresh Look At Our Modern And Contemporary Art Collections," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, November 2, 2011 - March 17, 2012.
Label textTom Wesselmann
American, 1931–2004
Bedroom Painting No. 15, 1968–70
Oil on canvas

Mundane objects become erotic in Tom Wesselmann’s Bedroom Painting No. 15. The shiny orange and the bright yellow pillow that dominate the composition coyly resemble women’s breasts, while an extended pink foot with painted toenails suggests a lounging female nude. The rose and the lover’s photograph are romantic symbols, but they too become highly suggestive. For example, the photograph—a self-portrait—positions the artist and the viewer as voyeurs of the seductive scene. With his early interest in cartoons, Wesselmann developed a talent for simplified and colorful imagery that seamlessly blends commercial and sexual desires.

Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 77.420


Published References Dennis R. Anderson, "New American Contemporary Masterworks," _Chrysler Museum Bulletin_ 4, no. 12 (December 1975): inside cover. Dennis R. Anderson, _Three Hundred Years of American Art in the Chrysler Museum_, exh. cat., Norfolk, Va., 1975, 227. Mahonri Sharp Young, "Primitive to Pop," _Apollo_ 107 (April 1978): 46-51. Slim Stealingworth, _Tom Wesselmann_ (New York: Abbeville Press, 1980), 58, 65, 182. ISBN: 0896590720, 0896591603 Trevor J. Fairbrother, "An Interview With Tom Wesselmann/Slim Stealingworth," _Arts Magazine_ 56, no. 9 (May 1982): 136-141. _The Chrysler Museum: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Norfolk, Virginia_ (Norfolk: Chrysler Museum, 1982), 113. ISBN: 0-940744-37-6 Gail Levin, _The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Twentieth-Century American Painting_ (London: Sotheby's Publications, 1987), 344-347. Brenda Schmahmann, "Tom Wesselmann's Post-Collage Works: 'Acting in the Gap Between Art And Life,'" _South African Journal of Cultural and Art History_ 3, no. 3 (July 1989): 270-271. Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_ (Norfolk: The Chrysler Museum, 1991), 194, no. 148. ISBN: 0-940744-59-7, 0-940744-62-7 Sam Hunter, _Tom Wesselmann_ (New York: Rizzoli, 1994), no. 62, 74, 127. ISBN: 0847818314 Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 246-247, no. 150. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6 Jeff Harrison, _Collecting with Vision: Treasures From the Chrysler Museum of Art_ (London: D. Giles Ltd., 2007), 82, fig. 95. ISBN: 978-0-940744-72-1
Provenance Sidney Janis, New York, New York, 1970; Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.; Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. to the Chrysler Museum, 1977.
Catalogue EntryTom Wesselmann
Cincinnati, Ohio 1931-2004 New York, N.Y.
Bedroom Painting #15, 1968-70
Oil on canvas, 84 1/4 × 119 1/4 in. (214 × 302.9 cm)
Signed and dated upper left: Wesselmann 70
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 77.420
Reproduction © Tom Wesselmann/Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y.
References: Slim Stealingworth, Tom Wesselmann, New York, 1980, pp. 58, 65; Gail Levin, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Twentieth-Century American Painting, London, 1987, pp. 344-47; Brenda Schmahmann, "Tom Wesselmann's post-collage works: 'Acting in the gap between art and life,'" South African Journal of Cultural and Art History 3 (July 1989), pp. 270-71.

Among the most irreverent and playful of post-World War II aesthetics, Pop art came to the fore in England and America in the late 1950s and over the next decade gained acceptance as a major style. Reacting to the abstract and subjective pictorial language of the Abstract Expressionists (see object 83.592), America's Pop artists embraced figuration and devised a readily accessible vocabulary of forms drawn from popular culture. Like James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol (see objects 71.699, 71.676, 81.39), Tom Wesselmann made liberal use of the "throw-away" imagery of urban mass culture-as encountered in newspapers, comics, magazines, movies, and television-and often did so to comment ironically on the nature of the erotic impulse in contemporary American life.
Wesselmann showed no inclination toward art until he joined the Army and began to try his hand at cartooning. Thereafter he studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati (Cincinnati was his hometown) and at the Cooper Union in New York City, where he encountered, and ultimately rejected, Abstract Expressionism.
His first significant works were small collages in a Cubist vein that juxtaposed his own drawings of female nudes with magazine clippings of soda bottles, food, and other commercial products. With time he abandoned these tiny assemblages for large paintings, though he maintained the bright, slick colors and hard-edge realism of the magazine ads. In 1962 he embarked on his series of Great American Nudes. These brashly colored, monumental canvases feature highly suggestive female nudes in bath or bedroom settings and often incorporated actual objects -telephones, radios, tables, and chairs-in an effort to create a more palpable domestic environment.
In 1967 Wesselmann began another series of large-scale canvases, the Bedroom Paintings, in which he pursued his fascination with erotic themes. These highly compressed images combined still-life objects appropriate to the bedroom and redolent of "pop" romance-pillows, lighted cigarettes, roses, oranges, a lover's photograph-with erotically charged parts of the male or female anatomy.
As in the Chrysler's Bedroom Painting #15 of 1968-70, the contours of these canvases are often shaped to fit the objects depicted, and thus echo the imagery's sensuously undulating forms. Wesselmann himself noted that in Bedroom Painting #15 he "gave the main role to a huge yellow pillow, and set up a dramatic scale change in the painting, between the pillow and the other elements." The gigantic foot with glossily painted nails serves as a tantalizing reference to an unseen female nude reclining on a bed, and as such it frustrates the viewer's desire to play the voyeur. In fact, Wesselmann reserves this role for himself: it is he who gazes from the photograph at bedside and who alone can "see" all from this privileged vantage point.
The Chrysler also possesses two of Wesselmann's preliminary drawings for Bedroom Painting #15, both executed in pencil on paper (see objects 87.508, 87.507).
JCH

Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 246-247, no. 150.