World Ball

World Ball, created thirty years into Thiebaud’s career, is an intriguing work that synthesizes two of the artist’s most celebrated genres: his signature still lifes and his aerial-view landscapes. It also displays the artist’s supreme skills as a colorist. Like many of Thiebaud’s iconic depictions of cakes and confectionary, the subject of the work is highlighted and isolated by its placement against a neutral background. In this case, however, instead of brushstrokes materializing as icing swirls or glossy fruit, the viewer is presented with a multi-colored globe-like object and the bold shadow that it casts. It is as though Thiebaud has stepped back from his vertiginous California landscapes in order to capture the whole world. But the painting is of course more than mere realistic representation for an artist of which it has been written: “Through his unlikely combinations of the real and the unreal, Thiebaud is able to elevate his work to a state of originality, both in the arrangement of forms in space and in the offbeat colors used to identify them” (J. Yau, “Wayne Thiebaud’s Incongruities,” Wayne Thiebaud, New York, 2015, p.24).

While the spherical shape, the colorful patches of variously worked pigment, and the longitude and latitude lines all give the impression that this is the picture of a globe, the lack of recognizable country shapes and the waviness of the lines reveal the artist’s hand. This is further emphasized by the use of halation, a signature Thiebaud technique, whereby light-infused lines of contrasting color encircle the ball and its shadow. The effect is one of pulsating vibrancy, which, at one and the same time, captures the essence of the depicted world and of this singular painting.