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.' DONALD KUSPIT