.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
Over his nearly seven-decade long career, Wayne Thiebaud has developed a reputation as one of the foremost proponents of figurative painting. Steadfastly refusing to submit to the gestural largesse of Abstract Expressionism, Thiebaud’s canvases capture the emotional resonance of a bygone age, turning ordinary and everyday objects into objects of quiet beauty. His bountiful paintings of diner counters, confectionary and row upon row sumptuous pastries captured the prosperity of postwar America as much as Andy Warhol’s Coca-Cola bottles and tins of Campbell’s Soup. Yet his meticulous painterly style helped to revive what had previously been the staid genre of still life before Thiebaud took hold of it in beginning in the early 1960s.
Confection Rows depicts a parade of pastry; six regimented columns of irresistible confections all perfectly in line. The slightly elevated viewpoint conjures up a childlike sense of wonder, as if standing on tiptoe to view the tasty treats paid out before us. Alternating rows of dark and light pastries creates an opportunity for the painter to indulge his love of shape in all its endless variations. The perspective being almost aerial, Thiebaud focuses directly on his subject, leaving out extraneous details of the scene, allowing the viewer to savor the geometries of the elements that are presented to us—a play of circles, straight lines and diagonals. Horizontal stripes of varying widths and colorations divide the canvas into sections and help to draw the viewer’s eye toward the center of the canvas.
One of the true delights of a Thiebaud composition is following the artist’s eye as he explores the contours of his subject. Thus, Confection Rows becomes a study in shapes with each row expressing a different geometric form, as rectangles, circles, pyramids, squares and spirals of varying sizes engage the viewer’s vision. Thiebaud demonstrates an interest in the sort of aesthetic concerns that often preoccupy every painter (matters of color, form and composition), whilst retaining a sense of joyful irreverence and becoming subsumed by the rules of traditions of academic painting.
Thiebaud also indulges his love of color as its painterly surface hums alive with dynamic range of hues, encompassing yellows, pinks, blues, greys, browns, reds and oranges. All across the canvas surface is the thick impasto, the wonderful cake frosting-like application of paint that distinguishes Thiebaud’s style, rich with luscious swirls, swipes, and layers of liquid paint. The present work is of course a view into a scene, but it is also a painterly surface alive with brushwork.
The light illuminating the scene produces long, dark blue shadows edged in yellow that contrast with the pale blue surface of the pastry counter. The shadows, too, are actually dynamic areas of color, not empty black but in fact diversely-hued and textured spaces of light. The artist’s use of contrasting colors around the edges of objects is Thiebaud’s way of enhancing the subjective impression his objects convey, thus imparting vitality rather than merely suggesting a copy of reality.
As evident in Confection Rows, Thiebaud was interested in figuration but in a style that was in dialogue with a highly personal vision, drawing upon the artist’s own memories and lived experiences. While delighting in the same commercial-Americana subject matter as the Pop artists, Thiebaud steered an independent course, more inclined to savor the sensuous pleasures of applying oil paint to canvas. It is this painterly quality, his love of what could be done with the thick and opulent medium, that distinguishes his work from the smooth, flat, brushless surfaces accomplished by many of the figures more closely associated with Pop Art.
Thiebaud painted many of his subjects not direct observation, but from memory. This had the effect of distilling and intensifying the recollected forms, conveying at one and the same time a feeling of remove and imparting the objects with a weight and solidity that seems to transcend time. The real subject of Thiebaud’s work is often not the subject itself, but the subject as the artist remembers it in his mind’s eye. What might at first seem ubiquitous, soon reveals a subtle, quiet feeling that envelops the viewer. His choice of subject matter together with his lush handling of paint produced Confection Rows, a work that depicts the beauty of light and surface with great sensitivity, while at the same time delving into the mysteries present in even commonplace objects.
Confection Rows depicts a parade of pastry; six regimented columns of irresistible confections all perfectly in line. The slightly elevated viewpoint conjures up a childlike sense of wonder, as if standing on tiptoe to view the tasty treats paid out before us. Alternating rows of dark and light pastries creates an opportunity for the painter to indulge his love of shape in all its endless variations. The perspective being almost aerial, Thiebaud focuses directly on his subject, leaving out extraneous details of the scene, allowing the viewer to savor the geometries of the elements that are presented to us—a play of circles, straight lines and diagonals. Horizontal stripes of varying widths and colorations divide the canvas into sections and help to draw the viewer’s eye toward the center of the canvas.
One of the true delights of a Thiebaud composition is following the artist’s eye as he explores the contours of his subject. Thus, Confection Rows becomes a study in shapes with each row expressing a different geometric form, as rectangles, circles, pyramids, squares and spirals of varying sizes engage the viewer’s vision. Thiebaud demonstrates an interest in the sort of aesthetic concerns that often preoccupy every painter (matters of color, form and composition), whilst retaining a sense of joyful irreverence and becoming subsumed by the rules of traditions of academic painting.
Thiebaud also indulges his love of color as its painterly surface hums alive with dynamic range of hues, encompassing yellows, pinks, blues, greys, browns, reds and oranges. All across the canvas surface is the thick impasto, the wonderful cake frosting-like application of paint that distinguishes Thiebaud’s style, rich with luscious swirls, swipes, and layers of liquid paint. The present work is of course a view into a scene, but it is also a painterly surface alive with brushwork.
The light illuminating the scene produces long, dark blue shadows edged in yellow that contrast with the pale blue surface of the pastry counter. The shadows, too, are actually dynamic areas of color, not empty black but in fact diversely-hued and textured spaces of light. The artist’s use of contrasting colors around the edges of objects is Thiebaud’s way of enhancing the subjective impression his objects convey, thus imparting vitality rather than merely suggesting a copy of reality.
As evident in Confection Rows, Thiebaud was interested in figuration but in a style that was in dialogue with a highly personal vision, drawing upon the artist’s own memories and lived experiences. While delighting in the same commercial-Americana subject matter as the Pop artists, Thiebaud steered an independent course, more inclined to savor the sensuous pleasures of applying oil paint to canvas. It is this painterly quality, his love of what could be done with the thick and opulent medium, that distinguishes his work from the smooth, flat, brushless surfaces accomplished by many of the figures more closely associated with Pop Art.
Thiebaud painted many of his subjects not direct observation, but from memory. This had the effect of distilling and intensifying the recollected forms, conveying at one and the same time a feeling of remove and imparting the objects with a weight and solidity that seems to transcend time. The real subject of Thiebaud’s work is often not the subject itself, but the subject as the artist remembers it in his mind’s eye. What might at first seem ubiquitous, soon reveals a subtle, quiet feeling that envelops the viewer. His choice of subject matter together with his lush handling of paint produced Confection Rows, a work that depicts the beauty of light and surface with great sensitivity, while at the same time delving into the mysteries present in even commonplace objects.