Thiebaud at 100: Career-spanning Crocker exhibit shines new light on icon’s art
The most prominently displayed work in Wayne Thiebaud’s sprawling retrospective now on view at the Crocker Art Museum through Jan. 3 to commemorate the celebrated Sacramento artist’s centennial may also be one of his most arresting.
Two figures, seated: wife and frequent subject Betty Jean Thiebaud at left; Wayne’s close friend — that’s Sacramento Bee scion C.K. McClatchy — to the right. The two are feet apart, but the distance between them may as well be miles. The pair wear terse expressions, their arms stubbornly folded at the chest, each looking away from the other. An uneasy tension fills the space. Clouds linger.
Thiebaud’s “Two Seated Figures” (1965) gives us an uncomfortable look into a private space and, in doing, Thiebaud accomplishes what he always has: extracting deeper resonance from the seemingly everyday.
The depiction of people, Thiebaud said in the notes that accompany another work in the collection, the striking “Betty Jean Thiebaud and Book” (1965-1969), “... is the most important study there is — and the most difficult. Viewers are more acutely attuned to the human body.”
Thiebaud, who turns 100 on Nov. 15, celebrates with this much-anticipated collection, “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings,” his largest exhibition in 20 years, an encyclopedic survey that bears witness to his enduring popularity. Unfortunately, Sacramento was demoted to the more restrictive purple tier, forcing the just-reopened museum to shut off availability to the public.
Tuesday’s news on the cusp of Thiebaud’s birthday deflated Crocker officials. The Crocker will be open to the public on Thursday, but will be closed again beginning Friday by order of state and county health officials.
“This is incredibly disappointing news,” Crocker officials said in a statement, calling later for the community’s continued support: “It is only through our shared commitment to preserving our community’s assets that we can ensure that Sacramento will remain a vibrant and thriving city in a post-COVID world.”
But Thiebaud refuses to be defined — the multi-dimensionality on display at the Crocker is staggering. Oil, etchings, pencil, watercolors. Paper and canvas. Figure studies, still life and landscapes. Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Realism.
A retrospective implies a looking back, a summation. Seven decades after Thiebaud’s first solo show at the Crocker, there is only forward motion.
“Thiebaud’s work is a combination of the real and the imagined, the nostalgic and the modern,” Crocker associate director and chief curator Scott A. Shields, whose book “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings” (Pomegranate) accompanies the exhibit, told The Bee in November 2019 ahead of Thiebaud’s 99th birthday. “These dichotomies are part of what give his work its lasting appeal.”
We see that in Thiebaud’s now-iconic dessert-inspired works. “Boston Cremes” (1962) and Crocker perennial “Pies, Pies, Pies” (1961), are on display. Also here is 1964’s “Delights” series, with 12 etchings: a roadside cherry stand; a neighborhood diner’s breakfast order of bacon and eggs; and, of course, the pastries, cakes and lollipops. Simple images and scenes, pulled from memory, shot through with nostalgia.
“It’s just very, very familiar. They’re mostly painted from memory, from memories of bakeries and restaurants. There’s a lot of yearning there,” Thiebaud said, as quoted in the exhibition’s notes.
He would tap the strain of memory decades later for his most recent series depicting circus clowns, titled simply “Clowns.” Drawn from a long-ago traveling circus he saw as a boy, his images carry what the exhibition’s notes call a “familiar combination of nostalgia and optimism, loneliness and isolation.”
And it’s there in his dizzying cityscapes. Thiebaud depicts a nearly vertical San Francisco as seen from his window during his study in The City. He captures the Delta landscapes near his Sacramento home, including the richly rendered “Brown River” (1998) that packs its own emotional weight. Its vistas — straw-colored late-summer fields bisected by the muddy, winding Sacramento River of its title depicted from above — again evoke the nostalgic, a return to home, a journey’s final approach.
He shows a strikingly different side working in watercolor for his spare “Farm Hill” (1992) and colored pencil for the undated etching “Cow Ridge,” both gifts to the Crocker from the Thiebaud family.
As with the brightly realized confectionery creations that thrust him into the contemporary art spotlight, Thiebaud’s landscapes are largely summoned from memory — and memories.
According to the notes accompanying “Brown River: “The paintings do not depict the landscape as it is seen, but as it is felt — and in a way that Thiebaud thought would have the most impact.”
Visitors will also see early points of departure, including the seascape “The Sea Rolls On” (1958). Painted upon his return to the San Francisco Bay area from New York, Thiebaud employs skeins of deep blues and blue-greens and slashing sprays of surf to conjure an icy Pacific as chalky skies frame the scene.
Thiebaud cited the influence of pivotal abstract expressionist Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993).
Diebenkorn’s words, quoted in the notes that accompany the piece, resonated with the Sacramento artist who would soon become a giant of his own:
“One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject. Reality has to be digested, it has to be transmuted by paint. It has to be given a twist of some kind.”
What to see
The Bee asked the Crocker’s director of education, Stacey Shelnut-Hendrick, and associate director and chief curator, Scott A. Shields, for an inside look at Wayne Thiebaud 100.
Shelnut-Hendrick: “I would challenge viewers to focus only on the shadows in Thiebaud’s work. They hold so much of the drama in his work and you could be mesmerized by them alone. By definition, they should be eclipsed by the main subject, but they are bold and create both motion and emotion within the works.”
Shields: “One of my favorite paintings now is ‘Portrait of Sterling Holloway.’ It wasn’t initially, but when you investigate it up close, it’s wonderful. It’s a painting about painting. At the same time, it is a portrait of an actor and voice-over personality. I am so charmed by ‘Cow Ridge’ because of the subtle narrative and abstract hearts on the animals.”
Information
What: Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, Drawings
Where: Crocker Art Museum, 216 O St., Sacramento
When: Oct. 16, 2020 – Jan. 3, 2021. However, Sacramento County was demoted to the purple tier and museums must suspend operations until COVID-19 numbers improve.
Hours: When open, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday – Sunday
Admission: Go to the site – https://www.crockerart.org/location – for details and pandemic protocols.
Contact: cam@crockerart.org; (916) 808-7000
FAQs: https://www.crockerart.org/faq
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