Out Box #1

Wayne Thiebaud's exquisitely rendered depiction of office efficiency is a superb example of the artist's unique ability to blend realism with abstraction. Painted in 1972, it demonstrates the aesthetic vigor that Thiebaud could derive from a seemingly prosaic object, having spent much of the past decade exploring the potential of carefully structured and brightly hued still lifes in his paintings of cakes and confectionary. Thiebaud paid careful attention to the abstract beauty of the striated monochrome form of the stack of paper and shadow it casts across the tabletop. The composition exemplifies the process whereby a painter 'can enliven a construct of paint by doing any number of manipulations and additions to what he sees both abstract and real simultaneously' (M. Strand, ed., Art of the Real: Nine American Figurative Painters, New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1983, p. 192). The Out Box combines regimented straight lines with a rich palette, both hallmarks of Thiebaud's precise painterly process and delight in meticulousness. His immaculate rendition of the individual sheets of paper arranged in a perfect pile, without a sheet out of place, reinforces the intensity of the composition. Combined with the heavy shadows and blank background, this highlights this image's intense, abstract nature. Yet Thiebaud steadfastly dedicated himself to exploring formal innovations through realistic subjects, declaring in 1968 that 'I think we have barely touched upon the real capacity of what realistic painting can do' (W. Thiebaud, quoted in A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, 2000, p.11). In applying the paint to the canvas in smooth planes of color, Thiebaud emphasizes the physical characteristic of the flat sheets of paper and the vast, empty expanse of the empty table top. While still life has its inherent art historical connotations, Thiebaud updates these by his use of an inherently modern subject. Set against a distant horizon, the painting suggests a landscape. The desk tray could have come straight out of an office supply catalog; the composition recalls the artist's early career in advertising. Thiebaud understood the visual impact of commercial artists' treatment of their subjects, such as using blank backgrounds to isolate the product and quick, decisive lines to delineate them.