Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings
This is an internal one sheet for Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings. For legal reasons, images are unavailable.
TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Wayne Thiebaud is one of America’s most prominent and admired living artists; he has long been affiliated with Pop Art, although his range is far more expansive.
Thiebaud’s artistic influences are many and varied: Paul Cézanne, Richard Diebenkorn, René Magritte, Willem de Kooning, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, and the perspectives used in Asian art are among his many influences.
The artist’s adolescence in Long Beach — where he served up stacked ice cream cones, hot dogs, and pie — as well a stint as a movie usher and a brief apprenticeship at Walt Disney Studios in Anaheim were all formative experiences.
He is also influenced by Sacramento, particularly its “light, heat, agriculture, and middle-American ambiance.” He acknowledges that it “gave me something essential.”
TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE SHOW
It represents his achievements in all media through a broad array of subjects, including his newest body of work: circus clowns.
The works are drawn from the Crocker’s holdings and the collections of the Thiebaud Family and Foundation — many of which, until now, have not been shown publicly.
The Crocker has hosted a Thiebaud exhibition every decade since 1951, when the Museum held the artist’s first one-person show, Influences on a Young Painter—Wayne Thiebaud, an exhibition that, like this one, included paintings, prints, and drawings.
TELL ME SOME COOL FACTS
Most of what he depicts is either man-made, mass-produced, or somehow manipulated.
Thiebaud’s abundant use of white helps create the perception that his paintings emit their own energy and light. He also surrounds his subjects with rainbow halations of color, which helps transition them into their stark backgrounds
His most recent series of paintings — American circus clowns — are in many ways a culmination of what he has been doing all along: caricaturing what he sees. The figures project a familiar combination of nostalgia and optimism, loneliness, and isolation
Thiebaud’s 1962 solo show, Wayne Thiebaud: Recent Paintings, coincided with the birth of Pop Art. The show was a massive success. Every single piece sold, and flattering reviews appeared in important newspapers and national magazines. Time magazine even credited him with creating the “slice-of-cake school.”
His work reinvestigates the concept of synesthesia, wherein one sense — in this case, sight — evokes another. Taste is most often at play. However, smell and touch also assume important roles. Sound is even suggested in some of his city and freeway subjects.
The artist does not see himself as a Pop artist. Nor does he think the identification is reflective of his true concerns. He states: “I didn’t think of myself as a Pop artist. So, I continued to explore what I thought were, pretty much, formal realist problems from my perspective, even though they were things which were common objects.”
WHAT ELSE DO I NEED TO KNOW?
The show was curated by Scott A. Shields. Photography (no flash) for personal use (non-publication) is allowed. In 2021, the show will travel to the Toledo Museum of Art, OH; the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, TN; the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX; and Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, PA.
RELATED PROGRAMS & CLASSES
Online exhibition — all 100 works (Available November 1)
Self-guided 3D Tour (Available November 1)
@Home Studio: Color Explosion (Available the month of October)
Paint an Abstracted Cityscape (November 1)
LIVE Teacher Workshop: Wayne Thiebaud 100 (November 10)
Homeschool Art Connection: Cakes & Pies (November 10)
Thiebaud 101: Color and Composition (Starting November 10)
Thiebaud 101: Figurative Drawing (November 7 & 8)
Panel Discussion: Three Takes on Thiebaud (December 6)
RELATED MUSEUM STORE MERCHANDISE
A fully illustrated scholarly catalogue — which will sell-out fast — several puzzles, journals, notebooks, a calendar, and an assortment of smaller items like postcards, buttons, and notecards. Select Thiebaud prints are available online via 1000museums.com.
FURTHER READING
“Nine Ways To Interact With Wayne Thiebaud 100 Outside The Galleries”
“Four Unexpected Places to Find Wayne Thiebaud” (Coming Soon!)