Bouquet 1998

This is Tom Wesselmann’s ‘Bouquet’, a colourful scene showing flowers in a vase. I am imagining the process of painting this artwork. The artist is carefully filling in each flat bold shape with bright colours. I am thinking about the surface of the painting; it looks so smooth and precise, it's hard to detect any brushstrokes. How did Wesselmann achieve this? The vase is a strong bold blue, and the flowers themselves are red, blue, orange and purple – so vibrant and beautiful! There’s something about the composition that seems very deliberate; the way the vase is placed at the bottom with the flowers sprouting out towards the top. He seems to be inspired by pop art, not unlike artists like Andy Warhol, but he also plays with modernism. I feel like I could look at it for hours, imagining the exchange of ideas between him and all the other artists who have painted bouquets over the centuries.