Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004)

"These works seem heraldic, the lips quasi-Baroque cartouches and the cigarette and crossed fingers, emblematic swords. They condense the eroticism of Wesselmann's Great American Nudes into succinct images of formal grandeur-only the Smokers are more symbolic, more fantastic, not plainly erotic like the Nudes but secretly obscene" (D. Kuspit, "Tom Wesselmann at Janis," Art in America, September/October 1974, p. 110).