The Austrian art historian Dieter Buchhart and his colleague Anna Karina Hofbauer have worked together for several years. Specialists in particular in American art, they were, among other things, the curators of the exhibition dedicated to Jean-Michel Basquiat in 2018 then the one showing the artist’s relationship with Andy Warhol, in 2023, both at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. They were entrusted with the curatorship of the exhibition “Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &…” which opens on October 17.
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While working on this exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, what new did you discover about pop art in general and the work of Tom Wesselmann in particular?
Dieter Buchhart : We have been working on this project for eight years. This allowed us, beyond Wesselmann’s work, to broaden the spectrum, of course to the tenors of pop art, such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist or Andy Warhol, but also to other lesser known artists, and particularly women. The Americans Rosalyn Drexler, Jann Haworth, Marisol and Marjorie Strider, the Japanese Yayoi Kusama, the Belgian Evelyne Axell, the Austrian Kiki Kogelnik… By studying in depth the life and work of Wesselmann, who died in 2004, we discovered that ‘beyond his work he is like a spider in the middle of his web, at the center of a network that connects different artists.
We also discovered, among sometimes very young artists, an enormous respect for Wesselmann. They don’t talk about Lichtenstein, not about Warhol, but about him, yes. And especially his latest discoveries, like the drawings cut out in steel (steel cut drawings) using laser, which was a new technology at the time. The lines are autonomous, you can take them in a bag and then reconstruct the drawing by installing them on a white wall, which we did here. For them, it is as important as the more recent discovery of 3D printing: we start from a very small drawing, a sketch, and we can enlarge it to wall scale.
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Anna Karina Hofbauer : The principle of laser cutting that he will use for his steels is not new to him. Very early on, he preferred panels to canvas because he could cut their shape, they are shaped canvas. The “missing” parts are as important as the painted parts: to reconstruct the image, you are obliged to use your imagination.
What is your view on the pop art movement?
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