All Photos By Gail

Like most still lifes, Tom Wesselmann’s Still Life #57 (1969–70) presents a number of ordinary objects — including an orange, a bouquet of flowers, a light switch, a radio, and a checked tablecloth. The artist spent three years developing this monumental work. The “main difficulty . . . and the one that took so long to resolve, was cropping or not cropping the radio,” he said. “I wanted to crop it to keep it more in a painting reference rather than something like a stage set.”

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

Installation View