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Lot Essay
“Where Warhol was cool and ironic, Thiebaud was warm and gently comic, playing on a collective nostalgia just this side of sentimentality.” - Catherine McGuigan (“Wayne Thiebaud is not a Pop Artist,” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2011).
Wayne Thiebaud’s Fudge Cakes is an essential example of the artist’s most celebrated subject matter and highlights not only his painterly abilities but also his groundbreaking investigation of representational subjects. Though initially exhibited with the artists that would herald the coming of Pop in America, Thiebaud’s works shared the interest in the everyday but veered away from the depersonalized handling of paint in favor of rich, emotional brushwork. “Where Warhol was cool and ironic, Thiebaud was warm and gently comic, playing on a collective nostalgia just this side of sentimentality” (C. McGuigan, “Wayne Thiebaud is not a Pop Artist,” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2011). Influenced by a meeting with Abstract Expressionist painters in New York in the late 1950s, Thiebaud internalized their vigor and respect for formal media, subsequently infusing it into seemingly simple paintings that vibrate with energy.
Presented in two rows of three on an plain white ground, six perfectly iced round cakes gleam with some unseen light. Their sharp edges and rich chocolate brown color are accentuated by Thiebaud’s dexterous brushwork. His ability to make the viewer aware of the thick impasto of his paint while simultaneously creating an illusion of thick cake icing speaks to his interest in the interstitial space between subject and surface. The lower edge of each dessert glows with a white light tinged by red and other colors reminiscent of viewing the scene through a window. Thiebaud referred to it as ‘halation’, and it has the same effect of a frosted cinema lens used to evoke nostalgic feelings. Laid out as if resting in a bakery window, the cakes seem to float and yet still allude to the pristine countertop on which they might be displayed. They are slightly askew, not painted in a rigorous grid. This introduces an element of humanity and makes the confections seem all that more real. "At the end of 1959 or so,” the artist recalled, “I began to be interested in a formal approach to composition. I'd been painting gumball machines, windows, counters, and at that point began to rework paintings into much more clearly identified objects. I tried to see if I could get an object to sit on a plane and really be very clear about it. I picked things like pies and cakes—things based upon simple shapes like triangles and circles—and tried to orchestrate them" (W. Thiebaud, quoted in Wayne Thiebaud: A Painting Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2000, p.15). Fudge Cakes is a clear example of this focus on objecthood in his work and asks the viewer to conjure a setting from the collective consciousness pulled from romanticized visions of diners and 1950s films.
Early in his life, Thiebaud worked as a commercial artist and illustrator. After World War II, he began studying art and eventually took up painting in the 1950s while teaching at Sacramento Junior College. It was not until he was offered a position at the University of California at Davis in 1960 that he began to explore what would become his signature style and subject matter. Influenced by myriad sources, Thiebaud’s knack for transforming pastries into paint studies and symbolic objects stems partially from his interest in the work of Jasper Johns. "It was not until he first became aware of Jasper John's Flag and Target paintings that Thiebaud fully realized the value inherent in the direction his own work was taking. More than anything else, it was John's use of white upon white and his thematic interplay between illusion and reality that expunged Thiebaud's doubts and hesitations" (J. Copeland, "Introduction," in Wayne Thiebaud, exh. cat., Pasadena Art Museum, 1968, p.10). The titular cakes in the present example are as much representations of food as they are investigations into the nostalgic signifiers of America. Leveraging a background devoid of detail the artist allows the audience to more clearly see the two states pushing back and forth in their view.
“At the end of 1959 or so, I began to be interested in a formal approach to composition. I'd been painting gumball machines, windows, counters, and at that point began to rework paintings into much more clearly identified objects. I tried to see if I could get an object to sit on a plane and really be very clear about it. I picked things like pies and cakes - things based upon simple shapes like triangles and circles - and tried to orchestrate them.” - Wayne Thiebaud
Working on the West Coast in the 1960s, Thiebaud found himself surrounded by the fledgling Pop movement. Highlighting consumer culture and the glistening imagery of mass production, artists within its purview cast a critical eye on the machinations of capitalism and advertisements. Thiebaud took a different route, instead highlighting objects that spoke to the prosaic nature of daily existence. Painting pies, cakes, and lipstick tubes, Thiebaud noted, "It was such a genuine sort of experience that came out of my life, particularly the American world in which I was privileged to be. It just seemed to be the most genuine thing I had done" (W. Thiebaud, quoted in, S. C. McGough, Thiebaud Selects Thiebaud: A Forty-Year Survey from Private Collections, exh. cat, Crocker Art Museum, 1996, p. 9). Enthralled with the pictorial promise of middle-class America, his subjects are presented as accessible and familiar, much how the real objects would be in a shop window. This early interest preceded both Pop art’s fixation on consumer products and the orderly repetition of Minimalism, further cementing Thiebaud’s importance as a trailblazing American artist.
Wayne Thiebaud’s Fudge Cakes is an essential example of the artist’s most celebrated subject matter and highlights not only his painterly abilities but also his groundbreaking investigation of representational subjects. Though initially exhibited with the artists that would herald the coming of Pop in America, Thiebaud’s works shared the interest in the everyday but veered away from the depersonalized handling of paint in favor of rich, emotional brushwork. “Where Warhol was cool and ironic, Thiebaud was warm and gently comic, playing on a collective nostalgia just this side of sentimentality” (C. McGuigan, “Wayne Thiebaud is not a Pop Artist,” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2011). Influenced by a meeting with Abstract Expressionist painters in New York in the late 1950s, Thiebaud internalized their vigor and respect for formal media, subsequently infusing it into seemingly simple paintings that vibrate with energy.
Presented in two rows of three on an plain white ground, six perfectly iced round cakes gleam with some unseen light. Their sharp edges and rich chocolate brown color are accentuated by Thiebaud’s dexterous brushwork. His ability to make the viewer aware of the thick impasto of his paint while simultaneously creating an illusion of thick cake icing speaks to his interest in the interstitial space between subject and surface. The lower edge of each dessert glows with a white light tinged by red and other colors reminiscent of viewing the scene through a window. Thiebaud referred to it as ‘halation’, and it has the same effect of a frosted cinema lens used to evoke nostalgic feelings. Laid out as if resting in a bakery window, the cakes seem to float and yet still allude to the pristine countertop on which they might be displayed. They are slightly askew, not painted in a rigorous grid. This introduces an element of humanity and makes the confections seem all that more real. "At the end of 1959 or so,” the artist recalled, “I began to be interested in a formal approach to composition. I'd been painting gumball machines, windows, counters, and at that point began to rework paintings into much more clearly identified objects. I tried to see if I could get an object to sit on a plane and really be very clear about it. I picked things like pies and cakes—things based upon simple shapes like triangles and circles—and tried to orchestrate them" (W. Thiebaud, quoted in Wayne Thiebaud: A Painting Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2000, p.15). Fudge Cakes is a clear example of this focus on objecthood in his work and asks the viewer to conjure a setting from the collective consciousness pulled from romanticized visions of diners and 1950s films.
Early in his life, Thiebaud worked as a commercial artist and illustrator. After World War II, he began studying art and eventually took up painting in the 1950s while teaching at Sacramento Junior College. It was not until he was offered a position at the University of California at Davis in 1960 that he began to explore what would become his signature style and subject matter. Influenced by myriad sources, Thiebaud’s knack for transforming pastries into paint studies and symbolic objects stems partially from his interest in the work of Jasper Johns. "It was not until he first became aware of Jasper John's Flag and Target paintings that Thiebaud fully realized the value inherent in the direction his own work was taking. More than anything else, it was John's use of white upon white and his thematic interplay between illusion and reality that expunged Thiebaud's doubts and hesitations" (J. Copeland, "Introduction," in Wayne Thiebaud, exh. cat., Pasadena Art Museum, 1968, p.10). The titular cakes in the present example are as much representations of food as they are investigations into the nostalgic signifiers of America. Leveraging a background devoid of detail the artist allows the audience to more clearly see the two states pushing back and forth in their view.
“At the end of 1959 or so, I began to be interested in a formal approach to composition. I'd been painting gumball machines, windows, counters, and at that point began to rework paintings into much more clearly identified objects. I tried to see if I could get an object to sit on a plane and really be very clear about it. I picked things like pies and cakes - things based upon simple shapes like triangles and circles - and tried to orchestrate them.” - Wayne Thiebaud
Working on the West Coast in the 1960s, Thiebaud found himself surrounded by the fledgling Pop movement. Highlighting consumer culture and the glistening imagery of mass production, artists within its purview cast a critical eye on the machinations of capitalism and advertisements. Thiebaud took a different route, instead highlighting objects that spoke to the prosaic nature of daily existence. Painting pies, cakes, and lipstick tubes, Thiebaud noted, "It was such a genuine sort of experience that came out of my life, particularly the American world in which I was privileged to be. It just seemed to be the most genuine thing I had done" (W. Thiebaud, quoted in, S. C. McGough, Thiebaud Selects Thiebaud: A Forty-Year Survey from Private Collections, exh. cat, Crocker Art Museum, 1996, p. 9). Enthralled with the pictorial promise of middle-class America, his subjects are presented as accessible and familiar, much how the real objects would be in a shop window. This early interest preceded both Pop art’s fixation on consumer products and the orderly repetition of Minimalism, further cementing Thiebaud’s importance as a trailblazing American artist.