A woodblock print of impossibly sticky candy apples. A watercolor monotype of a towering double-decker ice cream cone. A lithograph of sliced chocolate cake. To be sure, much of the art on display in "Thiebaud from Thiebaud" will induce a mouth-watering reaction. (We’d recommend you eat beforehand, should you go.) But this selection of prints and works on paper—filling Christie’s galleries in anticipation of the auction on Thursday, September 29—is hardly restricted to those delectable visual confections that helped make Wayne Thiebaud one of the most celebrated figures to come up alongside the Pop Art scene in the 1960s.
The emergence of Thiebaud (born in 1920) as an art star was at once meteoric and relatively late. In his early 40s, he had his breakthrough show at Allan Stone Gallery with a collection of food paintings of which he himself had major doubts. "I painted these eight or ten pies on plates and thought, well ... No one’s going to take me seriously now," he admitted in an interview on CBS Sunday Morning in 2002. But the paintings became an instant hit with public and critics alike. As Allan Stone himself once commented, "His work is about celebrating the joy of living. I always feel uplifted when I see his work."
The current exhibition, curated with Thiebaud himself from his own studio, spans from an early, energetic drypoint entitled "Self Portrait" (1953) to the later, dreamy etching "Night River" (2011), and gives evidence to that joy whether Thiebaud’s subject is a wedge of lemon meringue pie or a gumball machine. The pleasure elicited is practically tangible. Repeatedly, you almost feel that the artist is daring you to make contact with his creations. As Thiebaud says himself in a video accompanying the auction, "Prints offer unique, expressive, and emotional feelings … so close to a human touch."
And who doesn’t secretly long to touch the richly textured icing in "Untitled (Cupcake)" (2001) or even his colorful assortment of "Bow Ties" (1990)? For Thiebaud’s pleasure in life—and in art-making—doesn’t end when his subject is no longer dessert. In his landscapes, you still sense his intense enjoyment of shapes, patterns and an interplay he refers to in the Christie’s interview as "syncopation." The drawing "City and Streets" (1995) is like a lovely homage to Braque reset in San Francisco, while the pared-down "Marked Land" (1977) abstracts the vista down to big black triangles and a square.
Contrary to what you might think, the priciest artwork on display isn’t a characteristic Thiebaud piece like "Boston Cremes" (1970) or "Big Suckers" (2002) but his "Levees and Dikes (Green River Turn)" (2000), a pastel and charcoal landscape currently valued between $350,000 and $450,000. This pastoral scene has got nothing to do with baked goods or candy sticks, but nevertheless, it’s still pretty sweet.
The auction "Thiebaud from Thiebaud: Prints and Works on Paper from the Private Studio of Wayne Thiebaud" will take place at Christie’s on September 29, starting at 2pm. The lots for this auction will be on display in the galleries September 22-28, 10am-5pm.
Read our tips for first-time bidders here, as well as a collecting guide to prints from Christie's.
"Big Suckers" (1971), courtesy of Christies Images Ltd., 2016
