There’s a certain something about the paintings of Tom Wesselmann that we can’t quite put our finger—or our lips?—on. For one thing, it gives us the uneasy feeling that somebody’s about to be gunned down in front of a fruitstand or on a causeway. But Wesselmann’s playful, eccentric obsession with oranges is just part of the pronounced aestheticism of everyday objects and body parts that characterized his work starting in the mid-60s: lips, breasts, feet, cigarettes, etc.

The humor and bursting colors accentuating such works as his Seascape or Bedroom series, though reminiscent of his pop art contemporaries, suggests that Wesselmann had a very different artistic agenda, exploring the intimacy, sensuality, and vivacity of things. We might even go so far as to describe Wesselmann as an artist of fetishism par excellence. Of all of his fetishes, we find the foot-oriented variety most enticing, for whatever reason—which is none of your business anyway. Somebody really ought to curate this exhibition.