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Lot Essay
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
Atitan of American painting, Wayne Thiebaud combines images culled from popular culture and memory with a decided affinity for painterly tradition. Dessert Table is a large-scale example of his much-lauded still-lifes that championed a representational mode at a time when pure abstraction was king. These highly articulated renditions of everyday subjects influenced generations of future painters with their heady combination of Pop sensibilities and allusions to Modernist formal concerns. His oeuvre sits between the realist and the abstract, the desserts are recognizable but only insomuch as icons of American prosperity in the mid-century rather than specific brands or types. They are colored shapes that become representational forms by virtue of Thiebaud’s fastidious paint application. In turn, they call to the idealism of 1950s and 60s diners and restaurants where the perfect slice of cake never existed but will always remain readily in the cultural consciousness. "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" (W. Thiebaud quoted in S. A. Nash, Wayne Thiebaud: A Painting Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2000, p.15). By allowing desserts, dishes, and landscapes to stand in for the color fields and angles of his non-representational colleagues, Thiebaud carved out a particular niche in which he flourished well into the twenty-first century.
Divided into three discrete horizontals, Dessert Table is a testament to Thiebaud’s ability to infuse common subjects with a formal richness and painterly delight. Realized when the artist was 76 years old, this canvas speaks to his mastery of paint, a lifelong commitment to his personal iconography and its ability to relay more than mere sentimentality. The upper section is rendered in a shade of very light pastel blue, while the slim strip in creamy white defines the lower border. In the center, a buttery field of glossy oil becomes a raked stage for myriad plates and cups of confections. Sundaes in fluted glasses, dripping donuts set in pairs, orange sorbets with green mint leaves, two rows of tantalizing cakes (wedges and cubes), and a bevy of large red and green watermelon slices march across the plane as if on a conveyor belt. The thick application of paint gives each item a physicality that resonates both with the reality of frosting as well as the emphasis on material and the artist’s hand so prized by Modernist critics. From a distance, the painting is seemingly straightforward, yet a closer look yields a kaleidoscope of colors within the white cake and contrasting halations that makes the tableware glow with an inner neon light.
Thiebaud organizes the scene like a snapshot; there are objects leaving the frame and shadows of others beyond. The dreamy colors and angled light give the impression that one is viewing these delicacies through a glass case or window in the late afternoon as feelings of nostalgia and the smell of sugar overwhelm our senses. "Most of the objects are fragments of actual experience,” the artist noted, hinting at his ability to draw upon these scenes from distant memories. “For instance, I would really think of the bakery counter, of the way the counter was lit, where the pies were placed, but I wanted just a piece of the experience. From when I worked in restaurants, I can remember seeing rows of pies, or a tin of pie with one piece out of it and one pie sitting beside it. Those little vedute in fragmented circumstances were always poetic to me" (W. Thiebaud, quoted in J. Arthur, Realists at Work, New York, 1983, p. 120). Constructing his compositions within a timeless realm, the artist dispensed with location-based signifiers or the hint of human activity. Rather, the confections exist in a liminal space between the past and present. Within Thiebaud’s oeuvre, it is if they have existed and will always exist as symbols of an idealized time and place.
Where Warhol was cool and ironic, Thiebaud was warm and gently comic, playing on a collective nostalgia just this side of sentimentality. Catherine McGuigan
Though his mature output was firmly entrenched in the zeitgeist of Pop, with its focus on everyday objects and cultural imagery, Thiebaud was nonetheless an outlier in the grand scheme of the often flashy and graphic movement. Instead of embracing mechanical techniques like Andy Warhol or emulating mass-production processes like Roy Lichtenstein or James Rosenquist, Thiebaud painted with a heavy impasto that enshrined his pedestrian subjects in an aura of the uncommon. This attention to the properties of the medium itself separated him from the wry crispness of his peers, but his subject matter and ability to divorce the scenes from reality allowed for a similarly rarified air to permeate the work. “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 early on by the sultry brushwork of artists like Giorgio Morandi and Diego Velázquez, as well as Paul Cézanne’s fascination with form, his richly-colored imagery drew its tension from the interplay between unusual perspectives and the materiality of paint. By drawing upon these earlier artists, Thiebaud’s practice established a dialogue between the history of painting and the evolution of representation.
In his early career, Thiebaud studied commercial art in California and occupied a brief position at Walt Disney Studios. He attended college after World War II and eventually took up a post as an art instructor at Sacramento Junior College. In the 1950s he was introduced to the work of the Abstract Expressionists during a visit to New York. These artists would inform his practice until 1960 when he began teaching at the University of California at Davis. This was the year he seized upon his now-legendary still life subjects like pies, cakes, and candy apples that are highlighted in works like Dessert Table. His imagery made its way into early exhibitions with Pop luminaries like Walter Hopps’ pivotal 1962 “New Painting of Common Objects” at the Pasadena Art Museum which included Thiebaud along with Warhol, Ed Ruscha, and Jim Dine. Drawing upon historical precedent, the painter set himself apart from these other artists by playing with iconography and symbols that related simple subjects to a larger conversation about American painting. "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). By carefully constructing a visual vocabulary that drew upon recognizable and relatable objects, Thiebaud was able to extract new life from the time-honored still-life tradition. With this structure in place, he went about problematizing the veneer of perfection being sold to American society and proved that painting was anything but dead.
Atitan of American painting, Wayne Thiebaud combines images culled from popular culture and memory with a decided affinity for painterly tradition. Dessert Table is a large-scale example of his much-lauded still-lifes that championed a representational mode at a time when pure abstraction was king. These highly articulated renditions of everyday subjects influenced generations of future painters with their heady combination of Pop sensibilities and allusions to Modernist formal concerns. His oeuvre sits between the realist and the abstract, the desserts are recognizable but only insomuch as icons of American prosperity in the mid-century rather than specific brands or types. They are colored shapes that become representational forms by virtue of Thiebaud’s fastidious paint application. In turn, they call to the idealism of 1950s and 60s diners and restaurants where the perfect slice of cake never existed but will always remain readily in the cultural consciousness. "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" (W. Thiebaud quoted in S. A. Nash, Wayne Thiebaud: A Painting Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2000, p.15). By allowing desserts, dishes, and landscapes to stand in for the color fields and angles of his non-representational colleagues, Thiebaud carved out a particular niche in which he flourished well into the twenty-first century.
Divided into three discrete horizontals, Dessert Table is a testament to Thiebaud’s ability to infuse common subjects with a formal richness and painterly delight. Realized when the artist was 76 years old, this canvas speaks to his mastery of paint, a lifelong commitment to his personal iconography and its ability to relay more than mere sentimentality. The upper section is rendered in a shade of very light pastel blue, while the slim strip in creamy white defines the lower border. In the center, a buttery field of glossy oil becomes a raked stage for myriad plates and cups of confections. Sundaes in fluted glasses, dripping donuts set in pairs, orange sorbets with green mint leaves, two rows of tantalizing cakes (wedges and cubes), and a bevy of large red and green watermelon slices march across the plane as if on a conveyor belt. The thick application of paint gives each item a physicality that resonates both with the reality of frosting as well as the emphasis on material and the artist’s hand so prized by Modernist critics. From a distance, the painting is seemingly straightforward, yet a closer look yields a kaleidoscope of colors within the white cake and contrasting halations that makes the tableware glow with an inner neon light.
Thiebaud organizes the scene like a snapshot; there are objects leaving the frame and shadows of others beyond. The dreamy colors and angled light give the impression that one is viewing these delicacies through a glass case or window in the late afternoon as feelings of nostalgia and the smell of sugar overwhelm our senses. "Most of the objects are fragments of actual experience,” the artist noted, hinting at his ability to draw upon these scenes from distant memories. “For instance, I would really think of the bakery counter, of the way the counter was lit, where the pies were placed, but I wanted just a piece of the experience. From when I worked in restaurants, I can remember seeing rows of pies, or a tin of pie with one piece out of it and one pie sitting beside it. Those little vedute in fragmented circumstances were always poetic to me" (W. Thiebaud, quoted in J. Arthur, Realists at Work, New York, 1983, p. 120). Constructing his compositions within a timeless realm, the artist dispensed with location-based signifiers or the hint of human activity. Rather, the confections exist in a liminal space between the past and present. Within Thiebaud’s oeuvre, it is if they have existed and will always exist as symbols of an idealized time and place.
Where Warhol was cool and ironic, Thiebaud was warm and gently comic, playing on a collective nostalgia just this side of sentimentality. Catherine McGuigan
Though his mature output was firmly entrenched in the zeitgeist of Pop, with its focus on everyday objects and cultural imagery, Thiebaud was nonetheless an outlier in the grand scheme of the often flashy and graphic movement. Instead of embracing mechanical techniques like Andy Warhol or emulating mass-production processes like Roy Lichtenstein or James Rosenquist, Thiebaud painted with a heavy impasto that enshrined his pedestrian subjects in an aura of the uncommon. This attention to the properties of the medium itself separated him from the wry crispness of his peers, but his subject matter and ability to divorce the scenes from reality allowed for a similarly rarified air to permeate the work. “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 early on by the sultry brushwork of artists like Giorgio Morandi and Diego Velázquez, as well as Paul Cézanne’s fascination with form, his richly-colored imagery drew its tension from the interplay between unusual perspectives and the materiality of paint. By drawing upon these earlier artists, Thiebaud’s practice established a dialogue between the history of painting and the evolution of representation.
In his early career, Thiebaud studied commercial art in California and occupied a brief position at Walt Disney Studios. He attended college after World War II and eventually took up a post as an art instructor at Sacramento Junior College. In the 1950s he was introduced to the work of the Abstract Expressionists during a visit to New York. These artists would inform his practice until 1960 when he began teaching at the University of California at Davis. This was the year he seized upon his now-legendary still life subjects like pies, cakes, and candy apples that are highlighted in works like Dessert Table. His imagery made its way into early exhibitions with Pop luminaries like Walter Hopps’ pivotal 1962 “New Painting of Common Objects” at the Pasadena Art Museum which included Thiebaud along with Warhol, Ed Ruscha, and Jim Dine. Drawing upon historical precedent, the painter set himself apart from these other artists by playing with iconography and symbols that related simple subjects to a larger conversation about American painting. "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). By carefully constructing a visual vocabulary that drew upon recognizable and relatable objects, Thiebaud was able to extract new life from the time-honored still-life tradition. With this structure in place, he went about problematizing the veneer of perfection being sold to American society and proved that painting was anything but dead.