Wayne Thiebaud turns 100 today: Sacramento celebrates its best-known artist
The influences on Wayne Thiebaud, the legendary Sacramento artist who marks his 100th birthday Sunday, are vast: there’s Willem DeKooning’s abstract expressionism, Richard Diebenkorn’s figurative works as well as commercial and comic art.
But don’t forget the Sacramento region where Thiebaud made his home and his name in the art world.
Thiebaud, who celebrates his 100th birthday Sunday, remains a vital and popular force.
Area art institutions are rolling out the red carpet to celebrate. A new installation at University of California, Davis’ Manetti Shrem Museum of Art will feature artists influenced by his path-charting work, decades in the classroom at UC Davis where he is a professor emeritus, and his ceaseless creativity.
“Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation” on view beginning Jan. 31, celebrates and investigates the iconic painter’s impact on generations of artists through the eyes and works of those on display.
A virtual preview of the exhibition — at 4:30 p.m. Thursday on Zoom — features Manetti Shrem founding director and exhibit co-curator Rachel Teagle and associate curator Susie Kantor.
Works from 19 artists are featured — those artists inspired by Thiebaud as a contemporary and his former students.
“People don’t realize how truly radical some of Wayne’s work was when he first came to UC Davis” in 1960, Teagle said. “He brought innovation to his teachings in ways that continue to inspire and teach many future generations of students.”
The talk Thursday will provide an inside look at the exhibit and unveil a new companion website to the show featuring comparative images and interviews with the artists. Teagle and Kantor will also discuss bringing the show to life during a pandemic.
The combination is, in Teagle’s words, “an exhibition in two parts: the physical exhibition, and the website.“
‘We wanted to share with the public how we’re doing it differently,” Teagle said. “It’s an incredibly rich website and with COVID, the (in-person) show has very little text — we’re removing places of congregation. We’re really hopeful that we will be able to open the show to the public.”
Neighboring Sacramento County’s slide back into the most restrictive purple coronavirus tier last week derailed Crocker Art Museum’s celebration of Thiebaud’s centennial including its sprawling installation “Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints and Drawings,” the artist’s largest in 20 years. The Sacramento museum closed Friday on order of county health officials.
The pairing of Thiebaud’s and the artists’ creations in the January exhibition further emphasize the connective tissue between teacher and student. The works displayed side-by-side “explore how (Thiebaud) forecast the future of painting through his personal journey to find meaning and reinvention in the medium’s history — and inspired his students to do the same,” the museum’s program notes read.
Thiebaud was recruited to join UC Davis’ fledgling art faculty in 1960 and taught for four decades, influencing a legion of artists who continue to extend his ideas.
“He’s an artist who sees teaching as central to his purpose as an artist,” Teagle said. “It’s unusual. He’s been around so long, taking it so seriously. He has an amazing legacy out there.”
Teaching and connecting with students “fuels his own work. It keeps his work fresh, driven. It takes a special person to see that reciprocity,” Teagle said. Thiebaud taught without salary for years after his retirement and continues to see students today.
The rewards are sure to be present in the 2021 showing.
January’s show features works from his first UC Davis student, Bruce Nauman and his last at the campus, Vonn Cummings Sumner, whose deeply existential works, all created in 2020, Teagle sees as a “series of love letters to Thiebaud.”
“This is art history. He’s an artist looking at the history of art” for his influences, Teagle said of Thiebaud. “Many (in the exhibit) are mid-career artists who look to Thiebaud.”
Painting was seen as a dying medium when Thiebaud ascended into the public’s consciousness in the early 1960s, Teagle said. His now-classic dessert-inspired works infused the art form with new energy. Where other of his contemporaries turned to irreverence or detached irony; when critics and observers saw popular tastes moving away from the canvas to photography or film, Thiebaud leaned into the medium’s history and tradition using that as a foundation for his art.
“He was a keeper of the flame, a champion,” Teagle said. “As we move more into the 21st century, he was among the few who saw painting as a serious intellectual pursuit.”
The humble, self-deprecating Thiebaud was reluctant to prepare another show dedicated solely to his works. But his thinking changed when the focus turned to programming a show featuring his students, Teagle said.
Teagle added, “When I told him what we wanted to do, he said, ‘This is an opportunity to give a leg up to the students. Of course, I would.’”
This story was originally published November 15, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
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