PLAYING WITH REALITY
An exhibition exploring a transitional decade in Wayne Thiebaud’s career is on view at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.
In his foreword to the scholarly catalog to the exhibition Wayne Thiebaud: 1958-1968, University of California, Davis, interim chancellor Ralph J. Hexter lays out a conundrum.
“Generally speaking,” he writes, “Mr. Thiebaud’s images seem defiantly elementary and quaint in their subject matter and technique, and yet there is a strong sense that a sharp intelligence has been employed to produce them—which in turn demands and sometimes inspires the sharpest intelligence the beholder can muster. This is not to deny that his cupcakes and pies offer simple—one might say delicious—pleasures. But there is so much more. Humor and a sometimes mischievous spirit are typical qualities—as if the subjects and style of his works might be, at least in part, a practical joke on a world that requires a serious demeanor from serious art. More surprisingly, there also seems to be something of a very different sort beneath the gaily colored confectionary surfaces. I hesitate to define this something else too confidently, but to my mind there are existential depths that haunt Mr. Thiebaud’s pleasing and playful works. Whether or not one shares these personal responses, I suspect that most of us will agree that these ostensibly simple canvases are
inexhaustibly rich and endlessly rewarding.”
In an interview, Rachel Teagle, founding director of the campus’s Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, and curator of the exhibition, expresses her surprise, when she began to research Thiebaud, that there had been no scholarly writing on his early years; years that coincided with his joining the faculty of UC Davis.
The exhibition, her catalog essay and others by Margaretta Lovell and Alexander Nemerov begin to rectify the lack.
Teagle says, “Wayne doesn’t even self-assign as an artist. He introduces as ‘a painter.’ He’s deeply committed to the practice of the medium, questions about painting and the limits of representation. His practice is about the nature of painting.”
Thiebaud is the largest single donor to the museum’s collection, works of his own and works by other distinguished members of the campus’ first-generation art community including William T. Wiley, Ruth Horsting and Robert Arneson.
“The paintings look fantastic in our museum—which was designed with him in mind. The entire collection was put together with the idea that students need to experience works of art firsthand,” Teagle says.
The museum opened a year ago “committed to the interdisciplinary experimentation that makes UC Davis a leading university. The museum’s dedication to impactful education is evident in every aspect, from programming to architecture,” according to Teagle.
Florian Idenburg, founding partner of SO – IL, associated architects for the project, comments the building is “…neither isolated nor exclusive, but open and permeable; not a static shrine, but a constantly evolving public event.” Bohlin Cywinski Jackson are also associated architects.
Thiebaud, who joined the faculty in 1960, is now professor emeritus. Sculptor Deborah Butterfield recalls her undergraduate and graduate school days: “The art faculty at UC Davis taught by example. Wayne would paint in his office, so when you would go in, he would be working, and we could see what he was doing.”
Thiebaud defended his celebration of common things in a statement he sent to the Museum of Modern Art in 1962. “I try to find things to paint which I feel have been overlooked. Maybe a lollipop tree has
not seemed like a thing worth painting because of its banal references…more likely it has previously been automatically rejected because it is not common enough. We do not wish it to be the object which essentializes our time. Each era produces its own still life. Painters use the objects as elements and units of their compositions. It seems to me that we are self-conscious about our still lifes without good reason. It is easier to celebrate the copper pots and clay pipes of Chardin or to pretend that our revolutions are the same as the ones expressed in the apples of Cézanne. We are hesitant to make our own life special…set our still lifes aside…applaud or criticize what is especially us…My interest in painting is traditional and modest in its aim. I hope that it may allow us to see ourselves looking at ourselves.”
He then went on to describe the aspects of painting that interest him—light, space and color and applying thick impastos of paint. He wrote a succinct introduction to appreciating the physical aspect of his paintings.
“Earlier in this discussion I mentioned the use of Impasto in painting this series. This is done for a specific purpose. It alludes to the tradition of illusionistic painting. In my case an experiment with what happens when the relationship between paint and subject matter comes as close together as I can possibly get them…white, gooey, shiny, sticky oil paint spread out on the top of a painted cake ‘becomes’ frosting. It is playing with reality…making an illusion which grows out of an exploration of the propensities of materials…an approach to ‘actualism.’ And while it is clearly in the line of ‘trick-of-the-eye’ painting where the artist is like a magician, I would like to show my hand and expose the trick…allowing the thrill of self-discovery and the ability to see oneself having the illusion.”
One of the iconic images in the exhibition that exemplifies his philosophy and his technique is titled, simply, Pies, 1961. In it Thiebaud appears to reconcile the advocacy of painterly abstraction and reveling in the materials espoused by his New York peers, with the traditions of representational still life.
Teagle ends her essay, “Working in what was perceived to be the conservative medium of oil painting he was nevertheless engaged in the most radical work of the day. He was a man of his time, but unlike his colleagues from that period, he found a path forward by looking back. In repeated acts of return, he mined the history of art as well as his own subjects and techniques to define an alternative future for painting. As such, Thiebaud’s early painting looks remarkably contemporary today both in its radical intent and its resolution in works of art that explore the limits of representation.”