Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective
by Steven A. Nash
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Book Summary Information
Author: Steven A. NashContributor: Adam Gopnik
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-06
ISBN: 0500092923
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Book Reviews of Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective
Book Review: 'What is America To Me?"
Summary: 5 Stars
Remember that old Frank Sinatra song that served as an inspirational film for rainy day grade school entertainment in the 50's? Well, if there is an artist who has captured the imagination and dreamy reveries of life in the past century, the quieter, more ebulliently committed time to joy and the simple treasures here, that man is Wayne Thiebaud. WAYNE THIEBAUD: A PAINTINGS RETROSPECTIVE is a beautifully designed catalogue raisonne of the pop artist's oeuvre that toured the country a few years ago. Organized by curator Steven A. Nash of San Francisco (the artist's home) this book is beautifully illustrated with all of the iconic images of pies, cakes, candy apples, etc. that everyone associates with Thiebaud. Yet it gives equal time to the inimitable 'landscapes' of the hilly terrain that is San Francisco, valleys of Northern California, and beaches. Thiebaud's ability to flatten vistas into geometric patterns can be compared to Richard Diebenkorn's purely abstract Ocean Park Series of paintings: both artists understand space, color, and the excitement of the line.
Accompanying this 'delicious' array of Thiebaud paintings are essays by both Nash and by Adam Gopnik of 'New Yorker' who aptly praises Thiebaud as a man in the same company of Americana as Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and John Updike! That about sums it all up and this essay alone would be reason enough to buy this important volume of American art history. Simply superb. Grady Harp, October, 2004
Summary of Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective
Wayne Thiebaud, the California-based painter, has produced works of complexity and distinction that appear deceptively simple in terms of subject matter and in their presentation yet draw on many historical sources.
In fact, Thiebaud is part of the grand tradition of representational art from Chardin and Manet to the American Realist masters such as Eakins and Hopper. Best-known for his deadpan still-life paintings of cakes, pies, delicatessen counters, and other consumer goods, Thiebaud has also explored such themes as figure studies, the topography of Northern California, and cityscapes exaggerating the vertiginous roadways and geometric high-rises of San Francisco. Continuous throughout his career is his combination of the perceptual and the conceptual, of sensuous color, light, and painterly texture with rigorously formal composition, resulting in a highly personalized Americana. Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective is published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same title, the first major survey in fifteen years of work by this famous American figurative artist. Steven A. Nash, Associate Director and Chief Curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, has organized the exhibition and provides a biographical essay on Thiebaud. An extended essay by Adam Gopnik, the Paris Journal writer for The New Yorker, links Thiebaud to American writing as a painter in the tradition of Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and John Updike.Famous for his dreamy 1960s paintings of cakes, Wayne Thiebaud began his career as a commercial artist and cartoon illustrator like many other artists of the period, including Andy Warhol. And like Warhol, Thiebaud became tied to pop art since he was making images of popular American products like food, lipsticks, and toys. Yet unlike many of his pop peers, Bay Area-based Thiebaud wasn't interested in poking fun at the establishment. He's a painter's painter, a real traditionalist. Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective covers a career of rendering still lifes, cityscapes, landscapes, and the figure. His cake paintings are formally beautiful in their color, shadow, and composition. They are perfect specimens of the good life in America, the paint lovingly applied in places like thick frosting. His cityscapes of San Francisco fiercely exaggerate the hilly landscape, capturing a perspective from the ground and air simultaneously while utilizing the light that the Bay Area is famous for.
Thoughtful essays by Steven A. Nash, associate director and chief curator for the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and Adam Gopnik, a writer for The New Yorker, discuss Thiebaud in relation to his peers, pop, modernism, and abstract expressionism. This book serves as a catalog for Thiebaud's major retrospective, which opened in San Francisco and travels to Forth Worth, Texas, Washington, D.C., and ends in New York in the fall of 2001. Besides their beauty, these works truly capture a period of American life in a way that feels free of irony but not without commentary about nature, the city, and how we've lived. --J.P. Cohen
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