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拍品专文
"Figures seem to have a reason for looking the way they do and acting the way they do in the painting. In other words, they're either posing for their portrait or they're making love or making war or doing something specific" (W. Thiebaud as quoted in, S. C. McGough, Thiebaud Selects Thiebaud: A Forty-Year Survey from Private Collections, exh. cat, Crocker Art Museum, 1996, p. 8). In Window Desk Still Life, a gouache on paper painted by Wayne Thiebaud in 1985-1986, the rendered figures, here objects used in correspondence, provide a glimpse into the domestic life of the artist, conveying the nostalgia of memory so prevalent in his best works. A self-proclaimed "modern formalist," (W. Thiebaud as quoted in, S. Nash, Wayne Thiebaud 70 Years of Painting, exh. Cat, Palm Springs Art Museum, 2009, p. 33) Thiebaud lends visual intrigue to the items of daily life, giving the potentially prosaic a palpable effect of understated elegance.
In Window Desk Still Life, Thiebaud presents assorted home office items arranged on the reflective surface of a black lacquer desk. A flower bud stretches out of the confines of the table top, tying in the surrounding border of wall and windows that grounds the scene in the domestic space. Writing tools, a deck of cards, and an upright candle fill the desk, arranged as if the artist himself had just been going about his correspondence and then stepped away, glancing back at the disarray with the intent to return. The grays, blacks, and blues of the painting are arrayed in contrasting cool and warm colors allowing an internal glow to permeate the painting. The vibrant magenta highlights of the blotter and vase capture the eye's attention, its sudden flash of color dancing across the space as if reflecting the light of an early evening. Not discrete objects, but rather organic components growing from the space around them, the objects on the desk are shaded and textured, their quivering shadows lending the painting a striking, abstract quality. Thiebaud here, as in many of his finest still lifes, paints a mostly flat background, indicated with a few stripes that define the features of his workspace. This compositional technique transforms the quotidian world into a world constructed of memory and reminiscence.
Thiebaud's singular artworks relate in technique and composition to the work of Richard Diebenkorn and other California artists, particularly in the flattened perspective and looser brushwork, for example, which can be found in Diebenkorn's treatment of space, giving his paintings a unique flatness defined by the colors and shapes of the California landscape in which he lived and worked. This "Bay Area perspective," also seen in the works of other Bay Area figurative painters such as David Park and Elmer Bischoff, was defined by re-imagining spatial relationships in order to achieve an innovative, California-inspired portrait of a special world. In the present work, Thiebaud has melded these compositional techniques, producing a beautiful rendition of a domestic interior that gives the viewer not only a glimpse into the artistic environment that shaped and inspired his work but also an experience of that halcyon grace with which he evokes the tradition of still lifes, while quietly inviting the viewer into his creative process.
In Window Desk Still Life, Thiebaud presents assorted home office items arranged on the reflective surface of a black lacquer desk. A flower bud stretches out of the confines of the table top, tying in the surrounding border of wall and windows that grounds the scene in the domestic space. Writing tools, a deck of cards, and an upright candle fill the desk, arranged as if the artist himself had just been going about his correspondence and then stepped away, glancing back at the disarray with the intent to return. The grays, blacks, and blues of the painting are arrayed in contrasting cool and warm colors allowing an internal glow to permeate the painting. The vibrant magenta highlights of the blotter and vase capture the eye's attention, its sudden flash of color dancing across the space as if reflecting the light of an early evening. Not discrete objects, but rather organic components growing from the space around them, the objects on the desk are shaded and textured, their quivering shadows lending the painting a striking, abstract quality. Thiebaud here, as in many of his finest still lifes, paints a mostly flat background, indicated with a few stripes that define the features of his workspace. This compositional technique transforms the quotidian world into a world constructed of memory and reminiscence.
Thiebaud's singular artworks relate in technique and composition to the work of Richard Diebenkorn and other California artists, particularly in the flattened perspective and looser brushwork, for example, which can be found in Diebenkorn's treatment of space, giving his paintings a unique flatness defined by the colors and shapes of the California landscape in which he lived and worked. This "Bay Area perspective," also seen in the works of other Bay Area figurative painters such as David Park and Elmer Bischoff, was defined by re-imagining spatial relationships in order to achieve an innovative, California-inspired portrait of a special world. In the present work, Thiebaud has melded these compositional techniques, producing a beautiful rendition of a domestic interior that gives the viewer not only a glimpse into the artistic environment that shaped and inspired his work but also an experience of that halcyon grace with which he evokes the tradition of still lifes, while quietly inviting the viewer into his creative process.