TitleSara Lee, Park Slope WC.2.79
Artist
Idelle Weber
(1932 - 2020)
Date1979
MediumWatercolor on handmade "Green & Green" paper
DimensionsImage size: 16 1/4 × 23 3/4 in.
Sheet size: 16 3/16 × 24 in.
Mat size: 28 1/2 × 36 in.
SignedSigned at lower left within image: "I. Weber / 1979 ©".
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number2004.32
Label TextWeber first established her reputation in the 1970s for her watercolors of vegetables and fruit stands. She then turned her eye to piles of trash strewn haphazardly on city sidewalks and gutters. These cool and precisely painted works relate stylistically to Photo-Realism. Weber found that the “really nitty gritty ugly stuff was the most interesting to paint. It wasn’t just the highlight on an orange or a tomato or whatever, it was not nice stuff. I’ve always had to make sense of my environment and I thought, ‘This stuff is really awful; and then I’d look at it closer and I’d think, ‘This is kind of marvelous . . . .’” Weber relates that the image for Sara Lee, Park Slope “was found in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. I was attracted to the metal Sara Lee tin, and the random textures, and density of information within the display. Within the material was a National Lampoon magazine. I was surprised to find it, and my husband was president of the magazine at the time. My friend, [the Pop artist] Tom Wesselman was especially interested in this watercolor, because he was a fan of the magazine.”
