Visitors to the Courtauld Gallery's new exhibition might find themselves fighting the urge to lick the artwork. Wayne Thiebaud's stunning displays of iced cakes and meringue-filled pie slices are so convincingly realistic they appear almost edible. The barriers placed in front of these paintings seem entirely justified given the artist's masterful ability to capture every delicious detail.
Thiebaud's technical prowess shines through his buttery brushstrokes and elaborate flourishes that bring confections to life on canvas. The wobble of custard, the coarse texture of piped whipped cream, and the glossy shine of sugar glazes are all rendered with remarkable persuasion. Paradoxically, the more extravagant and painterly his gestures become, the more appetizing the food appears to viewers.
His 1962 masterpiece "Candy Counter" perfectly demonstrates this topsy-turvy sensory experience. The painting catalogs an artificial world bursting with jaw-busting lollipops in vivid colors, toffee apple shells that seem to snap with sweetness, and nougat displaying the perfect yielding firmness of candy waiting to be sliced. Thiebaud's buttercream-like paintwork extends beyond just the sugary treats, encompassing the entire canvas so that even the glass and metal counter and the cool blue wall behind appear as luscious as a birthday cake.
The composition is completed by scales and lollipops positioned on the counter, with paint pushed into smooth ridges around them, creating the illusion that these objects were decorations pressed into fresh icing. This technique showcases Thiebaud's unique ability to blur the lines between artistic representation and tactile reality.
Born in 1920, Thiebaud spent his entire life in Sacramento, California, until his death in 2021. His background as an illustrator and commercial art director specializing in in-store display design significantly influenced his artistic vision. In the early 1950s, he transitioned to teaching, which provided him with the time needed to pursue painting seriously. As a self-taught artist who learned through practical experience, he considered teaching "really my education."
While Thiebaud enjoys celebrated status in his native United States, he remains relatively unknown in Europe. This current exhibition marks the first time his work has been featured in a UK museum, making it a significant cultural event. The Courtauld Gallery serves as a rare European guardian of Thiebaud's work, with recent acquisitions including "Cake Slices" from 1963, which inspired the "American Still Life" exhibition and its companion show featuring works on paper.
Thiebaud's artistic breakthrough occurred in 1961 when he shared his debut New York exhibition with another then-unknown artist, Andy Warhol. Despite both artists drawing from the vocabulary of post-war mass production and American consumer culture, their approaches differed dramatically. Thiebaud's unwavering commitment to traditional painting techniques contradicted Pop Art's cool cynicism and its fascination with printed advertising images and mass media.
While Thiebaud's multiple arrangements might superficially resemble Warhol's work, closer examination reveals crucial differences. His seemingly identical pie and cake slices are marked by subtle variations and imperfections that humanize the subjects. Fruit bleeding into softening pastry or a slowly melting scoop of ice cream serve as modern equivalents to the dying flowers and spoiling fruit found in traditional still life paintings, acting as gentle reminders of mortality.
Although Thiebaud drew upon his professional expertise when arranging cheeses, sausages, and carefully lettered price cards in works like "Delicatessen Counter" (1962), he viewed his true artistic lineage as stemming from the still lifes of Paul Cézanne and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. He also found inspiration in scenes of modern life, particularly exemplified by the Courtauld Gallery's own "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" (1882) by Édouard Manet.
Thiebaud's artistic maturation during the 1960s, the decade covered by this exhibition, was catalyzed by an encounter with artist Willem de Kooning. De Kooning encouraged him to paint subjects he knew intimately and cared about deeply, advice that proved transformative for the developing artist.
Despite their ice-cream colors and seemingly innocent pleasures, Thiebaud's confections do not portray a straightforwardly cheerful world. His hot dogs, pies, pinball machines, and delicatessen counters, including "Four Pinball Machines" (1962), are painted from memory, recalling scenes from his youth that were already being replaced by prepackaged foods and supermarkets by the 1960s.
Melancholy subtly infiltrates unexpected corners of these seemingly joyful works. Empty trays in display cabinets, deep shadows that threaten even the brightest shop lighting, and the notable absence of servers or any human presence create an underlying sense of loneliness. A solitary slice of pie becomes unexpectedly poignant, pulling at viewers' heartstrings with its isolation.
One of the most striking examples appears in "Delicatessen Counter" (1963), where a sausage seems to experience an existential crisis. The ghost of this sausage is rendered in a neutral brushstroke that sweeps through the background color, existing in paint no more or less substantially than its more naturalistically depicted neighbors, creating a haunting meditation on presence and absence.
In Thiebaud's artistic vision, scarcity and the end of familiar ways of life loom over the American Dream. Lollipops and yo-yos emerge in an indiscriminate frenzy of production as America faced a new era of crisis and uncertainty. Against this backdrop of change, Thiebaud offers the reassuring continuity of painting's grand tradition, expressing Cézanne's fundamental geometric principles—the cylinder, sphere, and cone—through candy sticks, yo-yos, and pie slices arranged on plates.
"Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life" runs at The Courtauld Gallery in London until January 18, offering art lovers a unique opportunity to experience these remarkable works that transform everyday American foods into profound artistic statements about memory, mortality, and the changing nature of American life.
