Wesselmann, born in Cincinnati, Ohio and trained at both the Art Academy of Cincinnati and New York’s Cooper Union, helped pioneer steel-cut sculpture and the use of molded plastic within fine art.

TOM SACHS: But seriously, with Wesselmann you’ve got this perfect pop-abstract representation of the female figure. You’ve got near perfect primary colors, almost like Matisse; there’s something really cartoon about Wesselmann. He also turned up, in a way, in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), which people are rediscovering now on DVD. There’s a lot of art in that movie—even a Wesselmann-type painting. I think that movie represents pop art better than anything.

Sottsass transcended the sameness of typewriter design to give it an endearing personality. He tuned into Pop art, citing the orange nipples and pink breasts in Tom Wesselman’s nudes as inspiration for the orange scroll caps.