Oil, enamel and acrylic on board with collage of printed advertisements, plastic flowers, refrigerator door, plastic replicas of 7-Up bottles, glazed and framed color reproduction, and stamped metal
Not on view
Still Life #30 is a large still-life composed of a table laden with images of fresh and packaged food, balanced by a pink refrigerator door, replica 7-Up bottles, and a window with a view to the city. Wesselmann remarked, “This kind of relationship helps establish a momentum throughout the picture… At first glance my pictures seem well behaved, as if—that is a still life, O.K. But these things have such crazy give-and-take that I feel they get really very wild.”
This work is one in a series of still-lifes featuring images cut out from magazines, then collaged directly onto the surface of his paintings. He composed with an eye towards the combination of objects, colors and textures. A painter, sculptor, and printmaker, Wesselmann never embraced the label of Pop artist. He said that he chose to depict everyday objects for their aesthetic qualities, not to make any cultural critiques.
Explore more
Pop art
A movement comprising initially British, then American artists in the 1950s and 1960s. Pop artists borrowed imagery from popular culture—from sources including television, comic books, and print advertising—often to challenge conventional values propagated by the mass media, from notions of femininity and domesticity to consumerism and patriotism.
Learn more →
From MoMA Design Store
Installation views
We have identified this work in the following photos from our exhibition history.
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.