Inside Fondation Louis Vuitton’s “Pop Forever” Exhibition Featuring Tom Wesselmann

Wesselmann is hardly the most famous Pop artist—indeed, his work may or may not register with most casual art fans, so at first, the choice may seem like an odd one. But the curators have an engaging story to tell about his importance and his influence, which they do with 150 of his pieces. “We saw Wesselmann as the spider in the net of Pop,” co-curator ​​Dieter Buchhart tells Galerie. “He connects the dots.”

Wesselmann’s juicy colors and images filled with icons of mid-century Americana, heavily influenced by advertising, still register with force—the show is on some level about consuming and being consumed. Sex is everywhere—at least a straight man’s version of it—with red lips holding dangling cigarettes, breasts and also oranges standing in for breasts, and of course reclining nudes.

Wesselmann was truly inventive with his process, using shaped canvases that were often heavily collaged, and incorporating working TVs, whirring fans, and other moving parts, making them at least halfway to sculpture.

One of the biggest revelations, if you haven’t seen them lately, are his enormous Standing Still Lifes of the early 1970s, which occupy a gallery toward the top of the museum. Measuring nearly 30 feet long, they are perfectly scaled for maximum impact, and looked at from the side, viewers can see how they are propped up, essentially forming a stage set. Also of note at the end of the show are his very late works, some of which verge, unusually, into pure abstraction.

The show’s most creative move is to bring Wesselmann into conversation with 70 works by 35 other artists like Derrick Adams, Lauren Halsey, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby. The interweaving of the other makers sparks a useful conversation that flatters everyone involved.

Mickalene Thomas, one of the featured contemporary artists, was there at the show’s opening, and she has pride of place, with a gallery to herself and a video of her talking about Wesselmann’s influence. Thomas has made her career depicting the Black female body, often bedazzled with sequins and other glamorizing touches, so her inclusion feels like an a-ha moment when you arrive there.

“I always wanted to show in conjunction with Wesselmann,” Thomas tells Galerie on the opening day in Paris. “But I wanted it to be just him and me,” she adds with a laugh. From her perspective, the exhibition is not successful because it includes her, but because it has the confidence to lay out its thesis without too much hand-holding—visually, it’s all there for the taking. “The show makes you make connections,” says Thomas. “You have to do some work, and I love that.”