For my Pop Art class, we had to write a research paper. This was quite the experience for me. First of all, I hadn't ever written a paper of its length (15-20 pages) or done very in-depth research. Second of all, we had to submit proposals at the very beginning of the semester. I thought I had a decent idea, but boy was I wrong. I had an idea to write about how food advertising was affected by the pop art movement. It seemed like a decent idea, but as I hadn't written a proposal before or written that long of an analytical art history paper, my professor tore it to pieces. Because I am a bit compulsive, I typed up his comments and saved them, so I have the pleasure of reading them today. But I don't need typed comments for the most important part of that experience, which was the check minus MINUS that was in big, black ink on the front. I read his comments and they were good. But I had written a proposal and gone to the library to do some initial research, so I felt like the double minus was insulting and unwarranted. At first, I waited until I got home and then slammed my dorm room door and stomped over to my bed and punched my pillow (all true) before calling my mom and crying and yelling and saying not very nice things about my professor and that I would just fail the class. Well, I also happen to hate failure and losing anything, so I changed my mind and made an appointment with my professor.
At the end of the day, writing that research paper was one of the most important academic experiences I have ever had in my life. I met with the professor many times over the semester to get his help, guidance, and suggestions for my research and writing, and I put in more work than I ever had to anything besides rowing. By the end of the semester, I knew I was going to get an A because I had learned so much and improved my writing so much and really felt like I had done some original research. (Now, I'm sure I will reread the paper and want to change things and edit sentences, but overall, I feel confident that I still would find it good.)
We had to do a presentation for the class, so I will include those images below and then my paper. My paper references the images that I had in my appendix using "figure" labels, but they are all the same as the ones I used in my presentation, so based on description, you should be able to tell which is which. Obviously my presentation originally was accompanied by me explaining it, but if you are really interested to see how it all connects, read the paper!
Tom Wesselmann’s American Still Life
and the postwar suburban American housewife
Tom Wesselmann’s early still lifes incorporate collaged advertising images with painted elements in a juxtaposition that emphasizes the ideals of the American household portrayed in advertisements in the 1950s and 1960s. Through formal analysis of composition, color, and rendering, paired with scholarship on Wesselmann’s still lifes and the 1950s and 1960s American household, Still Life #19 transitioned from a nostalgic evocation of the period of my parent’s childhood to a more complicated composition that suggests the roles and expectations of that period and how they were portrayed in advertising. Still Life #19 doesn’t make a positive or negative commentary on the ideals presented by the inspirations and sources for this work, instead the lack of compositional unity creates a focus on the awareness of the brands selling more than the products – the advertisements sell participation in the lifestyle of the American dream of postwar egalitarianism in the suburbs through the use of these products.
Still Life #19 is a still life composition by Tom Wesselmann from 1962 of collaged and painted elements. This relatively large scale work, 48 by 60 inches, is composed of a group of images of contemporary food objects on a tablecloth in front of a wall with a window. The objects on the table are primarily collaged advertising images of grocery products: a loaf of American Beauty white bread, a box of Lipton soup mix, red apples, a bottle of Schmidt’s beer, a canned Del Monte food product, a red Del Monte bottle, presumably ketchup, and a box of Camel cigarettes. A painted bowl for the apples and a bowl with some dessert with whipped cream and a cherry are interspersed among the still life objects. These are arranged on a blue and white checkered table cloth in front of a yellow wall with a red chair on the right and a window with red wall beneath it on the left. The window has a painted blue and white curtain halfway eclipsing an image of a shade revealing a photograph of two men rowing on the water surrounded by trees, seen from a distance and clearly outside the domestic sphere.
Red, white, yellow, and blue are the principal colors in Still Life #19. The repeated use of red, white, and blue underscores the American patriotism and consumerism portrayed in the advertisements of the time. All the food besides the apple – the only unprocessed, natural food – is yellow, suggesting the constancy and uniformity of mass-produced goods. All of the painted elements are strong, saturated hues of the primary colors – red, yellow, and blue. The wall is yellow with the shape of a red chair-back painted on it behind the tablecloth. The tablecloth is blue and white checkered, the same pigments as the curtain. The collaged elements are mostly from advertisements and therefore are also bright, saturated colors. The Del Monte logo features red and yellow that are very similar to the red and yellow Wesselmann painted on the canvas. The bread is white with yellow-brown crust and a yellow label. The Lipton box is red checkered and features a bowl of yellow soup. The Schmidt beer and Camel cigarettes are white with accents in brown and gold. The only aspect of the painting with a tonal variation and colors outside of the vivid primary group is the picture of the men rowing which features dull browns, greens, and blues. There is a stronger sense of contrast in the outside element of the painting, with the strongly highlighted boat and tops of the tree and the dark shadows beneath the tree and in the background.
Despite the realistic rendering of the objects in the painting, the discrepancies and inconsistencies among the objects negates a realistic, three-dimensional impression of the objects existing in this environment. The various elements conflicting with each other cue the viewer in to the inauthentic world the artist has composed, which then draws attention to the ideals typically portrayed in similar compositions at that time.
Because the collage elements are taken from different sources, the light and shadow vary in each item. The tablecloth and walls exhibit no shadows cast from the table or objects of the still life. The curtain has shadows within the folds and highlights down the ridges, suggesting a frontal light, but because none of the objects cast a shadow back onto the tablecloth or walls, the light in the painted areas is as inconsistent as in the collaged elements. Wesselmann’s painting style leaves very little trace of the hand of the artist, so the painted wall, chair, and curtains are without evidence of the brushstroke or texture. The lack of lighting and shadow variations on the painted surfaces of the wall and chair creates a very flat background for the still life.
The conflicting perspectives in Still Life #19 are more obvious discrepancies than the variations in lighting and shadow, and through their discomforting inconsistencies call further attention to the false world of the advertising layouts. The table slants up in perspective unrealistically, which flattens the objects on the picture plane instead of allowing them to recede as if they were placed on a real table. Because most of the objects are collaged from a variety of advertisements, they have various lines of perspectives which contributes to the flattening effect. The solid color wall and chair further this by presenting a completely flat background. Although the curtain has folds and shadows, its contrast with the wall and tablecloth without shadow continues the inaccuracies of depth and perspective present throughout the composition. The loaf of bread is placed across the front of the composition and picture plane. It recedes back to the right, pushing the elements behind it further back than the evenly spaced squares on the table cloth would suggest. The Lipton soup mix box juts out past the edge of the table and exists in a completely different line of perspective from the bread. The pudding is painted somewhat in accordance with the perspective of the table and the apples and Del Monte can seem to follow perspective similarly enough, so that the middle group has a fairly consistent perspective and horizon line. The back row, however, reverts back to the unsettling and conflicting planes.
The incongruous planes of the objects arranged in the back of the still life are highlighted by the close proximity of the bottles and cigarettes. The Del Monte ketchup bottle reveals almost all of its cap, sitting below the viewer’s horizon line, while the Schmidt beer bottle cap is almost flat, yet the two caps are relatively even. The Camel cigarettes peeking up seem to correspond to their horizon line, which is several inches below that of the Schmidt beer can. The variety of conflicting perspectives and the flat background presses the objects up to the front of the picture plane and prevents the work from conjuring up a credible space despite the accurate renderings of the collaged elements. The objects on the table stay well within the picture frame and cluster in the center of the painting, creating a staged and consciously composed group.
Cecile Whiting, Danilo Eccher, Christin Mamiya, and Thomas Garver have all explored the aspects determined through formal analysis of the American ideals portrayed in Still Life #19. Mary Beth Haralovich and Kristina Zarlengo examine the role of the American household and housewife at the time. Through studies of the patterns and standards in Wesselmann’s still lifes of the early 1960s and the historical context of the time, this scholarly literature supports the interpretation of Still Life #19 as a composition intentionally working to make the viewer conscious of the economic and social values of the time.
Thomas Garver’s introduction in an exhibition catalogue from 1974 for the Newport Harbor Museum introduces the formal objectives that Tom Wesselmann developed for himself in 1960 that are consistent themes in his still life works. These objectives were: keep the picture plane in front of the canvas plane, all colors must advance, keep space shallow or deny it altogether, and try to disintegrate the central images and disperse them around the canvas
.
Still Life #19 effectively follows most of these standards: the bright, warm colors advance, the space is shallow, and the picture plane is flat on the canvas plane. The images cluster in the center of the painting, but this is characteristic in other still lifes from 1962, which have the elements together in a similar arrangement to
Still Life #19. The catalogue also refers to the effect of the flat, abstract and geometric painted backgrounds to move the objects towards us and flatten the picture. This effect is seen
Still Life #19 with the solid patches of red and yellow behind the still life arrangement, placing the three-dimensionally rendered objects in a two-dimensional space that threatens their ability to sit on the picture plane.
Christin Mamiya’s chapter, ‘Corporations and the Imperative to Consume,’ in
Pop Art and Consumer Culture refers to
Still Life #19 in regards to the pervasiveness of labels like Del Monte and Tom Wesselmann’s use of those labels in his work. Mamiya points out that the companies wanted the label to be immediately recognizable to the consumers and more important to the purchasing process than the product itself. Wesselmann uses two Del Monte images in this work, yet neither explicitly shows the food within the package, allowing the label to speak to the viewer rather than the food in the same way advertisers placed the primary importance on the label and brand name. Mamiya also points out that the contrasts in Wesselmann’s works between the ‘tangible reality of the advertising image
’ and the flat, painted elements of the work heightens the perception of the taste experience and greater corporeality of the advertised products
. Although the flat background threatens the reality of the picture space, it also heightens the contrast between the perfectly rendered containers and foods of the advertisements with the painted areas. The sliced bread, shiny apples, and glistening beer appeal more to the viewer than the painted bowl of pudding because of their realistic and intentionally alluring appearance. Through these contrasts, Wesselmann propagates the ideals of the advertisements – these products are the new nourishment for suburban America and they provide for a better lifestyle by saving time and labor.
Cecile Whiting describes the ability of Wesselmann’s still lifes to ‘transport the viewer to the hearth of an economy of domesticity characterized by the increased number of goods available to the female consumer and homemaker after World War II
.’ Whiting points out that Wesselmann’s still lifes depicting the family oriented suburban kitchen focus on packaged foods that were mass-produced and readily available and perpetuates the image and perception of ‘postwar American economic egalitarianism
.’ The items present in
Still Life #19 are basic food staples – fruit, soup, bread, beer, and dessert. The brands represented in
Still Life #19 are affordable and nationally recognized – Lipton, Del Monte, Schmidt, and Camel. They explicitly suggest how they fit into and promote American ideals, like American Beauty’s sliced white bread. Focusing on food products that almost every home in America would consume and could afford,
Still Life #19 presents a spread that includes all Americans. The pervasiveness of the name brands corresponds to the overall environment of mass production throughout post-war America, from food to housing, as well as the development of the kitchen as a showcase for the modern American family
. Wesselmann’s arrangement of the typical food stuffs as an artistic still life on display refers to this treatment of the kitchen as an exhibition space.
Danilo Eccher parallels Whiting’s point of Wesselmann’s still lifes as establishing standards of American taste and beauty. The objects and brands Wesselmann uses “are the horizon of a popular, everyday landscape that recognizes a sincere idea of beauty in their familiarity… the systems used to manipulate taste are put to the service of art
.”
Kristina Zarlengo’s article on the Atomic Age American woman mentions that civic defense rhetoric categorized the American household as agency of the nation with patriotism as a domestic duty
. The contemporary focus on the American household as a place to showcase American idealism as well as pride in American manufactured goods is exhibited in
Still Life #19 through the use of red, white, and blue and domestic brand products. Wesselmann’s still lifes recreate the comforting perception of home that the brands and advertisements established for the suburban, typical American.
Mary Beth Haralovich examines the role of the 1950s homemaker and determines that “suburban development and domestic architecture were designed with a particular definition of family economy in mind: a working father who could, along, provide for the social and economic security of his family; a homemaker wife and mother who maintains the family’s environment; children who grow up in neighborhoods undisturbed by heterogeneity of class, race, ethnicity, and age.
” This is evident in Wesselmann’s
Still Life #19 in the portrayal of the indoor scene of domesticity looking out onto the separate world in which the male exists. The kitchen is home to ‘American Beauty’ bread in a patriotic color schemed environment, waiting expectantly for the males to return from the great outdoors, a world beyond the suburban home sphere, to enjoy the food, beer, and cigarettes thoughtfully arranged by the waiting housewife.
Wesselmann’s contrast of collaged image with painted surface, conflicting perspectives, and variety of image sources create a dynamic device that functions to make the viewer aware that neither Wesselmann nor the advertisements were trying to represent reality, instead, they portrayed and suggested certain ideals, roles, and expectations.
To determine the images and modes of composition Wesselmann drew inspiration from or reacted against in his still lifes, I looked through archives of Time and Life magazines from the 1950s. Many of the advertisements were stylistically similar to Wesselmann’s still life. Rather than introduce new aspects of composition, material, or presentation, Wesselmann seems to have emphasized certain elements already present in the advertisements. The style of drawing or photography in many of the advertisements look like the composition features collaged elements, which suggests that Wesselmann’s still life paintings and collages were more closely modeled after the actual advertising images of that era than they seem today.
Wesselmann exaggerates the flatness of the background to create a consciously uncomfortable environment that leaves the objects clustered on the picture plane instead of placing them in a accurately rendered scene. Although Wesselmann has emphasized this movement of objects toward the viewer, it is a device present in the advertisements from the 1950s. The advertisements press the products towards the viewer to entice them to consume this brand’s product, while Wesselmann uses the device to make the viewer conscious of the impossibility of the composition and question the motivations and underlying implications of the advertisements from which the collaged images are sourced.
In a Bell Telephone advertisement from Time magazine in 1958 (figure i), a housewife – perfectly made up, wearing a dress and pearls yet also holding a wooden spoon – is on the phone in her kitchen. The wall with the phone on it is a flat solid and the window, counter, and objects behind her only have depth because of their placement in the background. The salad bowl and window behind the housewife, as well as the housewife herself, look like collaged elements. The effect in this advertisement is that the housewife and the phone are the objects the viewer is invited to take into their world, away from this static and false backdrop. The composition around the housewife doesn’t create a realistic, three-dimensional context for her to exist in, just as Wesselmann’s still life provides only a flat plane behind the three-dimensional objects.
A Hotpoint stove advertisement from Time (figure f) has photo-like images of a stove and oven, which has an illustration of a turkey inside the oven. A drawn woman is rendered in the middle-grown and a drawn outdoor dining set occupies the left background. The dominant color of the advertisement is red: the semblance of countertop and wall with the stove and oven is red with some yellow accents, and the area surrounding the wall and counter – the background for the dining set and the woman – is almost the exact same shade of red. Like Wesselmann, despite the realistic rendering of both the drawn and collaged images, the setting is only suggestive of a real place – in this case, a suburban kitchen and backyard.
Advertisements for Hotpoint refrigerators in Time magazine issues from 1958 (figures c and d) portray large, open refrigerators accompanied by a housewife against solid color backgrounds. The refrigerators are stocked to the brim with meat products, milk, juice, desserts, and a variety of other products. These fridges portray the new accessibility to and lifestyle of plenty. An article describing the “visions of plenty” presented by refrigerators in America in the 1950’s concludes with this paragraph:
When the door of the 1950s refrigerator was shut, the entire unit receded, vanishing among the flush surfaces and polished metals of modernist aesthetics. But the moment hunger pressed, the refrigerator unfolded, seemingly by itself, into a vision of gustatory plentitude: an instantly edible spectacle, with every snack a story of material well-being.
The refrigerators presented in the ads of the 1950s, like Wesselmann’s still life, pressed themselves, doors open and neatly packed with food, up against the picture plane, inviting the viewer to bring the tangible products out of the unreality of the advertisement’s environment into their home. The composition of the Hotpoint advertisements and Wesselmann’s still life place the images against a solid color background that makes the objects advance towards the viewer, leaving them perilously against the picture plane, the refrigerators about to spill their bounty from their open doors as the slices of bread of Wesselmann’s still life about to fall off the board.
The constant, but less significant, presence of women in the background of the Hotpoint refrigerator advertisements indicates their roles as housewives and the impact these appliances will have on their lives. In the May 12, 1958 Hotpoint ad (figure d), the women sits surrounded by empty shopping bags. The obvious and superficial implication of this image is the amount of food she is able to store in the refrigerator. The underlying message suggests that now that refrigerator can store more food, the housewife has less trips to the store, improving her life by allowing her more time for other activities. Instead of having a purely beneficial effect on the housewife’s life and chores, Susan Hartmann suggests that the impact of labor saving appliances on the modern housewife included higher expectations of cleanliness, happiness, attractiveness of the home and family, and better mothering abilities
. The advertisements of
Life and
Time depicted perfectly clean home environments, fully stocked refrigerators, a variety of time or labor saving appliances, and a delighted housewife.
An advertisement from August 24, 1959 in
Life for Kroehler (figure g) almost explicitly states the double purpose of the advertisements of selling products and societal expectations. The image is of a child reading on a blue couch in a yellow living room – again, two colors dominate the composition and the floor and wall colors are the same, so despite realistic rendering and the suggestion of three-dimensionality by the placement of the objects, the furniture seems to float in space. The caption beneath the picture reads “Values like these are the reason why you can be CONFIDENT with KROEHLER.
” The advertisement doesn’t explicitly state what they are selling so the reference of the values is vague – is it the value of great furniture for a low price or is it the family values implied by a child setting in a middle-class suburban living room?
Two advertisements from Life magazine’s October 3, 1955 issue (figures a and b) feature similar compositional arrangements and elements to one another and Wesselmann’s Still life #19 and the comparisons suggest the roles and ideals of the society at the time. The Rath Black Hawk Meats bacon advertisement features cooked bacon on a baking sheet laid diagonally across the page, like the American Beauty bread of Wesselmann’s still life. Behind the sheet is a package of Rath bacon with a blue and white pitcher to the right and ears of corn to the left behind a basket of red apples. The apples, corn, and pitcher are icons of Americana that place the bacon into the category of a traditional American staple. The color scheme, like that of Wesselmann’s, is red, white, blue, and yellow, contribute to the undertones of American patriotism and mass produced consumerism. The ad gives no context or background, instead, it presents the objects in an unrealistic space. While Wesselmann gives a suggestion of background with the painted wall, chair, and curtain in Still Life #19, the flatness of the painting maintains this uneasy sense of real objects existing in an unreal space. The lack of realistic setting for the goods prevents the viewer from believing this is where the product belongs, that the life-like food item fits better in the consumer’s real world kitchen and home.
The second October 3, 1955 Life magazine ad is for Ann Page canned beans. A dish of beans, sausage, and cheese in a white and blue casserole dish set across the page like the bacon sheet and Wesselmann’s bread loaf. The frame of the picture barely extends beyond the casserole dish to include a bowl with a red apple and green grapes, a white glass chicken dish, and more blue and white china dishes all set on a red and white checkered tablecloth. Below the picture is the recipe for the bean dish shown with an image of the can of beans. The primary colors of the advertisement are, again, red, white, blue, and yellow. The chicken dish, blue and white china, and red checkered tablecloth are more examples of icons of Americana placed within the advertisements to suggest the product and brand’s place within the postwar focus on supporting American companies and traditions.
Still Life #19 is representative of Wesselmann’s still lifes from 1962 and 1963, which feature similar compositional motifs as Still Life #19 and the Ann Page and Rath meats advertisements. Still Life #24 is almost the exact same composition as Still Life #19, a corn on the cob cuts across the front of the page and a Del Monte can, a salad dressing bottle, and a pack of cigarettes are lined up behind it, and the background to these objects is a flat, painted, red, white, and blue table, wall and curtain. Through the window is an image of a sailboat at sea. All the still lifes employ the conventional motif of Wesselmann and the advertisers to force the images up onto the picture plane and provide them with an impossible and unrealistically rendered background environment. Still Life #30 presents another spread of food on a blue checkered table cloth, however, the frame of this is greater and includes the refrigerator and counter. Through the window is yet another view of the greater world beyond the domestic sphere, beyond the grasp of the housewife.
The examination of advertisements of the 1950s implies that there were certain societal expectations portrayed and promoted in the representations of the housewife and suburban environment. Scholarly literature about the postwar situation of American women describes the expectation that women happily assume the role of suburban housewife.
Anthropologist William Beeman writes about the importance of choice and the freedom of choice in the minds of Americans and how advertisers made consumer “choice” a central theme in their campaigns because it is a central and symbolic theme in American culture
. This particular American belief is an underlying aspect of the patriotic, red-white-and-blue color scheme of Wesselmann’s
Still Life #19, the Rath meats ad, and the Ann Page ad. The advertiser’s discrete correlation between these products as American products and brands develops into the product and brand as representative and supporting the founding and important cultural beliefs of America – freedom and choice. The advertisements offer a superficial freedom of choice to consumers – the freedom to choose their brand of food over another.
William Chafe’s book on the American woman includes a chapter on the post-World War II era that suggested aspects of life of postwar women present in the advertisements selected from
Life and
Time from that period and that Tom Wesselmann’s Still Life #19 calls to the viewer’s attention. Chafe discussed the overt dissatisfaction with being a woman and homemaker of middle-class, well-educated women
. The exaggerated happiness and delight of the women in the advertisements could be read as both instruction to those women of how to act and feel as well as promote the products as the missing link to making the lives of the housewives satisfactory and enjoyable.
In his book on the 1950s, David Halberstam offers the analysis that the images of ‘relentlessly happy’ American women accompanied by their new and improved appliances created the presumption that because it was true that the appliances were increasingly better and more prevalent, the women were as happy as the advertisers represented them
. Halberstam follows the development of the national perception of employed women as a patriotic necessity during WWII and then the almost immediate turnaround of that trend after the war, resulting from men returning to their jobs, the movement to the suburbs, and the ability for a family to survive on a single income
. S. J. Kleinberg also comments on the movement from WWII propaganda that portrayed women in the labor force supporting the war effort while upholding traditional family values to the postwar depiction of women to the sphere of the home, specifically the kitchen
. The new culture of consumerism that developed instructed women that their new roles were as homemakers who were merely buyers and consumers for the new appliances and products
. The magazines showed the women how to live their new lives: the advertisements of the time were there to show the women what to buy and how to use it and the articles alongside them told the women why they needed the products to look better, eat better, feel better, and take better care of their families
.
The advertisements of Life, Time, and other magazines of the era were primarily addressed to suburban domestic housewives who had been forcefully transferred to the domestic sphere and their role as homemaker as World War II ended. During WWII, the advertisements and magazines worked to encourage the women to participate and support in the war effort by working, and then almost immediately denied them that world and removed them to the disparate environment of suburbia once the war ended, men returned to their jobs, and the economy allowed families comfortable living on a single income. Just as it had been propaganda to encourage women into the workplace during the war, these advertisements were propaganda to sell women happiness and fulfillment in a lifestyle focused on the household, shopping, children, and suburbia. The advertisers had a consumer culture with a previously unknown wealth and affluence, able to purchase and consumer ever new and improved appliances and never ending supplies of food. Advertisers had to capitalize on this to create brand loyalty and encourage continued spending in their niche markets.
As time- and labor-saving appliances developed to make life easier for the postwar housewife, new expectations arose for her to maintain her appearance, the appearance of her home, engage more with her children, and derive complete happiness and fulfillment from these tasks. Many of these women were unhappy or unfulfilled in this environment and many were displeased with being displaced from the workplace. The advertisements of the time, then, did not depict the factual reality, but created a representation based on the roles and expectations of women by the postwar American culture.
Wesselmann’s Still Life #19 works to display the falsity of these advertisements as representation instead of reality, and to highlight the social roles and expectations being communicated and expressed by these representations. The ideals, roles and expectations of these advertisements and other constructed representations of homelife of the 1950s are perpetuated today as our culture views them nostalgically as accurate representations of the reality of the 1950s. Wesselmann’s still lifes work to create an awareness of the constructed world of the advertisement that makes the viewer reconsider the veracity of the images and representations that Wesselmann modeled his still lifes after.
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