Tom Wesselmann’s woodcut Seascape Dropout recalls the Western tradition of the female nude while incorporating elements of modernism to update this timeless motif.

Anyone who’s seen a naked woman can attest to the fact that it is, in and of itself, a work of art. For centuries, artists have attempted to capture the beauty of the female form in endless ways. From Titian’s Venus of Urbino to Manet’s Olympia to Matisse’s Odalisque, the female nude has pervaded Western art, and Wesselmann’s practice continues to explore this form. In Seascape Dropout, Wesselmann takes this motif and infuses it with the new societal attitude towards sex as well as modernist artistic practices.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, American culture began to loosen up on its puritan attitude about sex. Sexologist Alfred Kinsey began reporting on human sexual behavior by interviewing thousands of people on their sexual activities and preferences. His findings showed that most Americans were dirty, dirty sluts, engaging in homosexuality, premarital sex, and even masturbation. His studies became part of the sexual revolution that brought us the legalization of oral contraceptives, Pinup girls, the use of sex in advertising, and, best of all, Playboy. Yes, Hugh Hefner played a surprising role in inspiring Wesselmann’s artistic practice.  

Originally a cartoon artist with a passion for dirty jokes, Wesselmann submitted his cartoons to be published in Playboy Magazine. The Playboy “playmate” embodied the ultimate vision of perfection through the male gaze: long legs, perpetual youth, devoid of personality or purpose outside of pleasing men. Seascape Dropout focuses directly on a perfect nipple, leaving most of the woman’s body cut out from the image. Wesselmann’s “Drop Out” series consists of negative shapes, images dictated by the unseen. You cannot see most of the woman’s face, only her two voluptuous breasts, a section of a leg and an arm, with the seascape in the distance. You only see what really matters; titties. Art critic Howard Halle said it best when he wrote, “Tom Wesselmann was the Pop Art Da Vinci of engorged mammary tissue ... what the whale was to Ahab, the tit was to Wesselmann: A mountain of pale flesh forever heaving into the mind’s eye--or, as in the case of the shape canvases that comprise ‘drop out’ physically dissolving into negative space.”

Seascape Dropout elegantly combines the newfound sexual liberation of the ‘50s and ‘60s, contemporary art practices, and a traditional motif. At the center of it all, though, lies the true inspiration of his art. A nice pair of boobs.