If imitation is the most sincered form of flattery, Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021) knew how the most fiery was. The renowned artist once said: “It is difficult for me to think of artists who did not influence me because I am such a flagrant thief.”
Next month, an important retrospective emphasizes that Thiebaud’s six-decennium is a career, with around 60 typical works that include a series of subjects. From his celebrated still lifes of dessert displays and prosaic household objects to portraits, cityscapes and vast natural views, Wayne Thiebaud: Art comes from art Takes a deep dive in the artist’s involvement in art history.
Thiebaud spent time in the 1950s with abstract artists such as Franz Kline and Elaine and Willem de Kooning in New York City, where he also meets Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In the city, Thiebauded made small paintings of food on windows, which he further explored when he returned to California.
The career of Thiebaudud originated with a focus on illustration and cartoons, which were in line with the rise of pop art in the US in the early sixties. A reaction to the austerity of the first and second world wars, the movement celebrated daring colors, repetition and everyday objects and raw materials.
Art comes from art shows how Thiebruud borrowed from the breadth of European and American masterpieces, from Henri Matisse to Richard Diebenkorn to Andrea Mantegna. “I believe a lot in the tradition that art comes from art and nothing else,” the artist said.
Thiebaud has copied, re -interpreted, pureed and transformed art history into his own artistic vision, considered the cumulative work of other artists a kind of archive of repository – an encyclopedic ‘desk of Standard to Titans of the Western Art Canon.
In oil paintings such as ’35 cent Masterpieces’, Thiebaud gives a representation of works of art that occur to postcards or bookshelves in a museum gift shop. And Lighting Redolent from Edward Hopper, also known for displaying everyday American scenes, contrasts the topics of ‘five sitting figures’. Together with Thiebuld’s lively, buttery images of meals and treats with characteristic glowing blue shadows, extra pieces of reference Rembrandt, George Seurat, Édouard Manet and much more.
Wayne Thiebaud: Art comes from art Opens at San Francisos Legion of honor On March 22 and will continue until 17 August. The show is accompanied by a catalog published by UC Press planned for release in mid -April. Find your copy Bookstore.
