.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
"It started out just as a sort of crazy problem to set for myself to orchestrate abstract elements with the subject matter. As soon as I did that, as I say, I couldn't help but look at it and laugh, 'That certainly has to be the end of me as a serious painter--a slice of pie.' But I couldn't leave it alone...It just seemed to be the most genuine thing which I had done." -Wayne Thiebaud
Both intimate and expressive, Wayne Thiebaud's Slice of Pie (1961) is an important early depiction of the artist's most celebrated subject. Executed a year before the exhibition at the Allen Stone Gallery in New York that would catapult his career, Slice of Pie signals the break through moment when Thiebaud moved into his distinguished mature style, creating work that would secure his position in the canon of American Art.
As both a lover of realism and a commercially trained artist, Thiebaud embraced the clarity of geometric shapes that he culled from the aesthetic delights of the everyday commercial world: "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, quoted in Wayne Thiebaud: A Painting Retrospective exh. cat., Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2000, p.15). Nowhere is this more convincingly rendered than in the sophisticated composition Slice of Pie, in which the bold contours of an interlocking circle and triangle delineate the spatial relationship of objects..
The early still-lifes in 1961 marked Thiebaud's abandonment of the dramatic Abstract Expressionist flourishes of his art as late at 1959, which represented to the young artist a challenge to "see if I can't just present something as clear as I can" (Wayne Thiebaud quoted in Stephen C. McGough, Thiebaud Selects Thiebaud: A Forty-Year Survey from Private Collections, exh. cat., Cocker Art Museum, 1996, p. 10). Having spent most of his life in California, Thiebaud's adoption of rhythmically worked repetitive brushstrokes that enliven a roughened impasto, demonstrate the approach to figuration and surface texture shared by a group of Bay Area figurative artists, among them David Parks, Elmer Bishoff, and Nathan Oliveria.
Still, Slice of Pie is deeply rooted in Thiebaud's New York influences. The late 1950s was also a time when the artist began to rid his compositions of a horizon line in favor of a monochromatic background that abjured deep space: "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 Johns's use of white upon white and his thematic interplay between illusion and reality that expunged Thiebaud's doubts and hesitations" (John Copeland, "Introduction," in Wayne Thiebaud, exh. cat., Pasadena Art Museum, 1968, p.10).
The monochromatic background in Slice of Pie creates a counterpoint with the expressive black lines, Thiebaud enlists to pierce the planes of the composition, demonstrating the artist's own fascination with the interplay between white and other pigments: "There is something about white that has a very special appeal to me in relationship to my painting" (Wayne Thiebaud quoted in Wayne Thiebaud, "Wayne Thiebaud: An Interview." Wayne Thiebaud, exh cat., Pasadena Art Museum, 1968, p. 30). In Slice of Pie the tactile nature of Thiebaud's white paint is expressed in its interplay with the pastel hues of sweet confections. The white of the whipped meringue pies and fluffy dollops of frosting spread atop slices of cakes and cupcakes mark it as an essential ingredient in Thiebaud's pantry of comestibles.
Both intimate and expressive, Wayne Thiebaud's Slice of Pie (1961) is an important early depiction of the artist's most celebrated subject. Executed a year before the exhibition at the Allen Stone Gallery in New York that would catapult his career, Slice of Pie signals the break through moment when Thiebaud moved into his distinguished mature style, creating work that would secure his position in the canon of American Art.
As both a lover of realism and a commercially trained artist, Thiebaud embraced the clarity of geometric shapes that he culled from the aesthetic delights of the everyday commercial world: "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, quoted in Wayne Thiebaud: A Painting Retrospective exh. cat., Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2000, p.15). Nowhere is this more convincingly rendered than in the sophisticated composition Slice of Pie, in which the bold contours of an interlocking circle and triangle delineate the spatial relationship of objects..
The early still-lifes in 1961 marked Thiebaud's abandonment of the dramatic Abstract Expressionist flourishes of his art as late at 1959, which represented to the young artist a challenge to "see if I can't just present something as clear as I can" (Wayne Thiebaud quoted in Stephen C. McGough, Thiebaud Selects Thiebaud: A Forty-Year Survey from Private Collections, exh. cat., Cocker Art Museum, 1996, p. 10). Having spent most of his life in California, Thiebaud's adoption of rhythmically worked repetitive brushstrokes that enliven a roughened impasto, demonstrate the approach to figuration and surface texture shared by a group of Bay Area figurative artists, among them David Parks, Elmer Bishoff, and Nathan Oliveria.
Still, Slice of Pie is deeply rooted in Thiebaud's New York influences. The late 1950s was also a time when the artist began to rid his compositions of a horizon line in favor of a monochromatic background that abjured deep space: "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 Johns's use of white upon white and his thematic interplay between illusion and reality that expunged Thiebaud's doubts and hesitations" (John Copeland, "Introduction," in Wayne Thiebaud, exh. cat., Pasadena Art Museum, 1968, p.10).
The monochromatic background in Slice of Pie creates a counterpoint with the expressive black lines, Thiebaud enlists to pierce the planes of the composition, demonstrating the artist's own fascination with the interplay between white and other pigments: "There is something about white that has a very special appeal to me in relationship to my painting" (Wayne Thiebaud quoted in Wayne Thiebaud, "Wayne Thiebaud: An Interview." Wayne Thiebaud, exh cat., Pasadena Art Museum, 1968, p. 30). In Slice of Pie the tactile nature of Thiebaud's white paint is expressed in its interplay with the pastel hues of sweet confections. The white of the whipped meringue pies and fluffy dollops of frosting spread atop slices of cakes and cupcakes mark it as an essential ingredient in Thiebaud's pantry of comestibles.