‘A great gift to the world’: California, art community pay tribute to Wayne Thiebaud
Reaction continued to pour in from California and across the art world upon the death of Wayne Thiebaud.
The luminary artist whose iconic works from vividly colorful confections to soaring city streets and meandering landscapes celebrated the everyday and who dedicated his life to teaching a new generation of artists died Christmas Day at his Sacramento home. Thiebaud was 101.
Thiebaud was “a great gift to the world,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement Sunday night.
“From gumball machines to the landscapes of San Francisco, he transformed everyday life into an iconic statement of color and form…. A devoted Sacramentan, Wayne gave back to the people of California,” the governor wrote. “Wayne Thiebaud was the pride of California and a great gift to the world.”
At University of California, Davis, Thiebaud’s teaching home for more than 40 years, and where his multi-generational legacy extends from its galleries’ walls to the legion of artists he taught, mentored and influenced over the decades, the loss was profound.
“The communities of the University of California, Davis, are deeply saddened by the passing of artist and Professor Emeritus Wayne Thiebaud on Dec. 25 at the age of 101,” UC Davis’ statement read. “His brilliance, talent, warmth and generosity leave a legacy that will live on and enrich our campus and the world for generations to come.”
UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May spoke of Thiebaud’s “profound and lasting influence on our university.”
“But his legacy transcends UC Davis,” May said. “He was beloved as an artist, professor, mentor, father, grandfather, philanthropist and community leader. He was a brilliant artist, and his work will forever encourage us to see our world in a more textural light, where common objects can ascend to profound and iconic heights.”
Rachel Teagle, founding director of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, home to 90 of Thiebaud’s works, many donated by the artist, remarked on Thiebaud’s contributions in the classroom and his love of teaching.
Teagle announced a gift of 24 of Thiebaud’s works from his foundation to the university’s fine arts collection at a November gala at Manetti Shrem to honor the artist and the foundation on the eve of Thiebaud’s 101st birthday.
“Wayne Thiebaud believed teaching and learning were life’s most important pursuits. He loved to read, discuss and look together with his students,” Teagle said in a statement provided by the university. “‘Painting is a team sport,’ he liked to say. “And for his many, many lifelong students, learning with Wayne was a great honor.”
The influential journal artforum posted in a tweet Sunday upon the master’s passing, “At a time when many of his contemporaries appropriated everyday objects and mass imagery to skewer the American dream, Thiebaud stood out by sugarcoating it, confecting the evocations of childhood nostalgia from memory.”
With those images, the pies and pastries and gumballs, a solitary cup of coffee or a smoldering cigar, Thiebaud “succeeded at the elusive task of creating a new visual species, a new (painted) world,” the art historian, critic and writer Julia Friedman wrote for 2000’s career-spanning “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints and Drawings” (Pomegranate).
To Jerry Saltz, Pulitzer Prize-winning senior art critic at New York Magazine, Thiebaud was a “Painter of the luscious sublime,” he posted to Twitter on Monday. “Hallucinatory surfaces, uncanny perceptual intelligence, thick buildups of rich color, hard light, luminosity, total control & Hopperesque remove that made you meld with the work.”
Thiebaud’s gift for capturing the everyday also added greatly to Sacramento’s visual lexicon. The simplicity of Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s black and orange SMUD logo and the large-scale mosaic, “Water City,” (1959) that adorns the utility’s headquarters, are both Thiebaud creations.
“We’re saddened by the loss of an icon,” SMUD posted on Twitter. “Mr. Thiebaud was a giant in Sacramento and the art world, and we were honored that he designed the SMUD logo and the iconic facade of our HQ building. We join the community in celebrating his legacy.”
The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, home in 2020 to a sweeping retrospective of Thiebaud’s work marking his centennial, and of his first one-man exhibition in 1951, remembered “a great talent who has left an indelible legacy. We will miss this extraordinary member of our community.”
Seoul-based art writer Andrew Russeth offered this poignant remembrance via Twitter:
“The ice cream never melts, the cakes are fresh out of the oven, and the world is bathing in light,” Russeth wrote. “The day is young, but there are shadows creeping in. RIP, the great Wayne Thiebaud.”
This story was originally published December 27, 2021 at 3:59 PM.
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