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.
