MUSEUMS: Wayne Thiebaud, “I didn’t think of pies at first.”
The Morgan Library & Museum
05.28.2018
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“Surprisingly, I didn’t think of pies as first. I had a wonderful conversation with Willem de Kooning. What he actually said to me was, ‘Well, you are actually a pretty good painter, like you could do something, but why are you just copying people like me, Franz Kline, and so on?’ He said, ‘What you are doing is the mistake a lot of young painters make. You’re trying to make what you think is art, like the signs of art. Whether it’s the drip or the silver paint or the grandiose signature—those are all the elements that are not important in art.’” —Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud, Draftsman is open at The Morgan Museum & Library through September 23, 2018.
From The Morgan Museum & Library:
Best known for his luscious paintings of pies and ice-cream cones, California artist Wayne Thiebaud (born 1920) has been an avid and prolific draftsman since he began his career as an illustrator and cartoonist. Featuring subjects that range from deli counters and isolated figures to dramatic views of San Francisco’s plunging streets, Thiebaud’s drawings invariably endow the most banal, everyday scenes with a sense of poetry and nostalgia. The show is the first to explore the full range of the artist’s works on paper, from quick sketches to pastels, watercolors, and charcoal drawings.
