Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004)

‘I was working with my belt as an object for a painting, a coiled up belt. It was an intriguing element in a still life and I thought, ‘Gee, that would make an interesting sculpture.’ So it got started. For me the hard part about sculpture is what objects to do…For example, I want to do a sculpture of a shoe. I can’t just do a big shoe - it’s just a big shoe; that’s all it is. So there are only a very few things that I can work with that can be abstract enough so the abstract aspect of it can dominate its form’ (T. Wesselman, quoted in I.Sandler, ‘Oral history interview with Tom Wesselmann’, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, January-February 1984, reproduced at https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/ interviews/oral-history-interview-tom-wesselmann-12439).