Shaded with charcoal like shapes in a drawing yet standing in front of the picture plane on a sleek Formica shelf, Wesselmann’s oversized recreations of everyday objects seem to waver between sketched flatness and three-dimensional thinghood. Behind the wooden beer bottles, real shadows meet illusory ones; a thick band of charcoal borders the backing panel, echoing the wood moulding applied to its surface; and the clock’s face has been replaced with a diagram of one. This “drawing” inverts the typical illusionistic goal of a realistic drawing: instead of trying to make two-dimensional forms on paper look like real three-dimensional objects, Wesselmann flattens his objects by making them look more like illustrations. Wesselmann said he could not recall whether this work preceded or followed his relief Still Life No. 42 (1964), calling into question the relationship between a “drawn” study and a finished work.
In 1964 Wesselmann began to combine real objects into his still lifes in an effort to move away from using sources that had been filtered through advertising. This work belongs to this period. Unlike most of his still lifes, the work combines two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements - the shadows and clock are painted, yet the objects sit on a sculpted shelf. Although titled "drawing," Wesselman did not use the relief as a preparatory study for Still Life no. 42, a work in which he reduces manufactured objects to sculptural emblems of themselves. Rather, Wesselmann uses the painterly aspects of the work to create a playful exhange between the literal and the represented.
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