.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Presented against backdrop of alloyed white and grey, the dark voluptuous curves of Wayne Theibaud's Guitar transform what might be regarded as a prosaic object into a rhythmic composition that brilliantly marries realism and abstraction. Embracing each contour of the guitar's body are rich striations of brilliant color that coalesce to form a kaleidoscopic halo, which enhances the shadows and highlights the subtle nuances of the work to brilliant effect. Painted during a pivotal point in the artist's career, Guitar is an early example of Thiebaud's mature style in which he mastered the transformation of seemingly ordinary objects into icons of great beauty.
Painted in 1962 (with the addition in 2002 of the rack at the top upon which the guitar hangs), this painting demonstrates the aesthetic vigor that Thiebaud could derive from the everyday. 1962 was a breakthrough year for Thiebaud--it was the year of his first one-man exhibition in New York at the Allan Stone Gallery, a show that galvanized critical attention. Attuned to the abstract beauty of the curvilinear form of the guitar, Thiebaud's composition exemplifies the process he praised, 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, 1983, p. 192). The guitar's shape suggests a figure of a woman, predating the sensual nudes that he would paint later in the 1960's. Yet the guitar is also an emblem of consumer culture, of Elvis and Peter, Paul and Mary and the whole genre of popular music that was emerging at the time.
Thiebaud's use of a plain background recalls the artist's experience in advertising in the 1940s. Thiebaud understood the visual impact of commercial artists' treatment of their subjects, such as using blank backgrounds--in this case a subtle white with a hint of grey in it--to isolate the products and quick, decisive lines to delineate them. This device, which is present in some of Thiebaud's most mesmerizing work, has been likened to the strict formalism of Malevich and Mondrian, but other critics have identified it as being central to Thiebaud's unique brand of warm American romanticism: "Such features tend to transport the familiar yet highly simplified and conceptual objects that Thiebaud sculpts with paint and brush away from out quotidian world where the laws of physics, optics, and weather prevail into his own world where the sun always shines, gravity in inert, and nothing spoils. It is a world constructed equally of memory and longing, and a very pleasant place to be" (S. Nash, 'Thiebaud's Many Realisms', Wayne Thiebaud: Seventy Years of Painting, exh. cat., Palm Springs Art Museum, 2009, p. 15).
Painted in 1962 (with the addition in 2002 of the rack at the top upon which the guitar hangs), this painting demonstrates the aesthetic vigor that Thiebaud could derive from the everyday. 1962 was a breakthrough year for Thiebaud--it was the year of his first one-man exhibition in New York at the Allan Stone Gallery, a show that galvanized critical attention. Attuned to the abstract beauty of the curvilinear form of the guitar, Thiebaud's composition exemplifies the process he praised, 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, 1983, p. 192). The guitar's shape suggests a figure of a woman, predating the sensual nudes that he would paint later in the 1960's. Yet the guitar is also an emblem of consumer culture, of Elvis and Peter, Paul and Mary and the whole genre of popular music that was emerging at the time.
Thiebaud's use of a plain background recalls the artist's experience in advertising in the 1940s. Thiebaud understood the visual impact of commercial artists' treatment of their subjects, such as using blank backgrounds--in this case a subtle white with a hint of grey in it--to isolate the products and quick, decisive lines to delineate them. This device, which is present in some of Thiebaud's most mesmerizing work, has been likened to the strict formalism of Malevich and Mondrian, but other critics have identified it as being central to Thiebaud's unique brand of warm American romanticism: "Such features tend to transport the familiar yet highly simplified and conceptual objects that Thiebaud sculpts with paint and brush away from out quotidian world where the laws of physics, optics, and weather prevail into his own world where the sun always shines, gravity in inert, and nothing spoils. It is a world constructed equally of memory and longing, and a very pleasant place to be" (S. Nash, 'Thiebaud's Many Realisms', Wayne Thiebaud: Seventy Years of Painting, exh. cat., Palm Springs Art Museum, 2009, p. 15).