Expo Mouth #10

Wesselmann was born on February 23, 1931, in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended university before serving in the Korean War during the early 1950s. While enlisted with the U.S. Army, he began to craft cartoons. Upon his return to the U.S., he earned an art degree from Cooper Union in New York City. It was in New York that Wesselmann started to develop his own pop aestethtic. His first major series was titled The Great American Nude. For this series, Wesselman incorporated commonplace items with reclining female nudes and other nude figures. From this intense study of the human figure, his series Mouth was created. Mouth is a series of works that specifically detail the human mouth in a number of different poses---from open gapes to pursed lips holding a cigarette. In Expo Mouth #10, we are confronted with an exposed tongue. The lips are parted, which imbues a sexual tone to the work.