The exhibition of the American realist painter Wayne Thiebaud (born in 1920 and now almost a century old), at the Manetti Shrem Museum on the campus of the University of California, Davis, focuses on his early work in the decade from 1958 to 1968. The handsome museum, generously endowed by two Napa Valley winemakers, Margrit Mondavi and Jan Shrem, opened in November 2016. The Grand Canopy outside, a structure of swooping aluminum and steel curves, allows light and shadows to filter throughout the grounds. The lobby inside has polished concrete floors and floor-to-ceiling windows.
In his illuminating “Artist’s Statement” in the exhibition catalogue, Thiebaud mentions his time spent as a cartoonist, illustrator, and advertising artist. He works variously from actual objects, from his commercial photographs, and from memory. More could have been written in the accompanying catalogue about Thiebaud’s artistic influences and the effect of his lifelong university teaching in California. There is nothing about his “hero” Manet, and his expressionist swirls and Pop Art subjects are very different from traditional still life (the muted brown tones of everyday objects in Chardin, the precise exactitude of Morandi), despite comparisons made by the catalogue contributors. One student’s banal remark could apply to any teacher: “He showed you how to pay attention to what you were doing.”
These pictures make us look again at these familiar objects of consumption.
Thiebaud’s signature pies are painted with glaring light and deep shadows, bright colors and bold impasto, like poetic Robert