Austrian art historian Dieter Buchhart and his colleague Anna Karina Hofbauer have worked together for several years. Specialists especially in American art, they were, among other things, the curators of the exhibition dedicated to Jean-Michel Basquiat in 2018 and then the one showing the artist’s relationship with Andy Warhol, in 2023, both at the Louis Vuitton Foundation. They have been entrusted with the curation of the exhibition “Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &…” which opens on October 17th.
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 widen 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 in especially women. . The Americans Rosalyn Drexler, Jann Haworth, Marisol and Marjorie Strider, the Japanese Yayoi Kusama, the Belgian Evelyne Axell, the Austrian Kiki Kogelnik… Deeply studying the life and work of Wesselmann, who died in 2004, I discovered that “beyond him is like a spider in the middle of his canvas, at the center of a network that connects different artists.
I also discovered, among sometimes very young artists, an enormous respect for Wesselmann. I’m not talking about Lichtenstein, not about Warhol, but about him, yes. And especially his latest discoveries, such as the drawings cut out in steel (steel cut designs) using laser, which was a new technology at the time. The lines are self-contained, you can take them in a bag and then reconstruct the drawing by installing them on a white wall, which is what I 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.
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 canvas panels because he could cut them to shape, they are shaped canvas. The “missing” parts are as important as the painted parts: to reconstruct the picture, you are forced to use your imagination.
What is your view on the pop art movement?
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