Julia Friedman :: JuliaFriedman.org

Wayne Thiebaud 100 Catalogue essay

Posted on April 18, 2020, 9:56 AM, by jfriedman, under Essay, Wayne Thiebaud.

Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings, is a forthcoming catalogue for the eponymous centennial exhibition at Sacramento’s Crocker Museum. In 1951 the Crocker also hosted Thiebaud’s first solo show entitled Influences on a Young Painter.

My contribution to the volume is an essay “Nothing is Unimportant” that presents Thiebaud’s most recent circus-themed body of work, putting it in the context of his persistent focus the craft of painting and the authenticity of human experience.

Share on Facebook

Tags: Clowns, Existentialism, formal analysis, Henry Miller, painting, Richard Wollheim, Wayne Thiebaud

CONTACT
Search for:
I Don't Understand with William Shatner: What makes something art?
Netflix Documentary "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed" (2021). Directed by Joshua Rofé.
UCLA Hammer Museum: in conversation with Dave Hickey 05.11.16.
Dave Hickey & Julia Friedman from Hammer Museum on Vimeo.
Site Santa Fe: in conversation with Dave Hickey 04.15.16.
The great modernist eccentric Alexei Remizov was a “writers’ writer” whose innovative poetic prose has long since entered the Russian literary canon. Gradually expanding his working methods to make drawing an integral part of the writing process, during the 1930s and 1940s, Remizov created hundreds of albums that combined texts with collages and india ink and watercolor illustrations. (more) Northwestern University Press 7 x 10, 300 pgs, Trade Cloth ISBN 0-8101-2617-6 / $69.95
Skira Editore Milano just published a monograph on British-Iranian artist Reza Aramesh. In addition to several texts, and an interview with the artist, ACTION: BY NUMBER contains a catalogue raisonné of his work from 2002 onwards, including Aramesh’s recent marble sculpture. I discuss the art-historical genesis and cultural meaning of these spectacular and frightening works in my essay “The Meta of Marble.” (pp.124–129). SKIRA Editore Milano Hardcover. 248 pages, 153 ill., size 24x28cm ISBN 978-88-572-5285-8
Between June 2014 and April 2015, Dave Hickey posted almost 3,000 digital comments on social media, prompting nearly 700,000 words in response from art lovers, acolytes, and skeptics. Wasted Words is an unedited comprehensive transcript of these exchanges. This polyphonic digital discourse reveals the range of Hickey’s strong opinions, as he embarks on a crypto-enlightenment project for the benefit of "dunces" and "pricks." Paperback, 586 pages, 2016 ISBN-10: 1517287103
Dustbunnies is an assemblage of “swept up” fragments that came from a vast digital discourse that took place in Dave Hickey’s social media space between June 2014 and March 2015. During that time Hickey posted almost 3,000 comments, prompting nearly 700,000 words in response from art lovers, acolytes and skeptics. Wasted Words, the resulting volume, is an unedited comprehensive transcript of these exchanges. Its pendant publication, Dustbunnies, distills Hickey’s richly aphoristic comments, extracted from various discussion threads. Paperback, 124 pages, 2016 ISBN-10: 152327266X
Over the past seven years Wayne Thiebaud has made dozens of paintings, drawings, and etchings of clowns. Like much of his work, this latest series is in a sense autobiographical. During his boyhood in Long Beach he looked forward to the visits of a traveling Ringling Brothers circus and sometimes helped out behind the scenes in exchange for tickets. The costumes, faces, and antics of the clowns were the beginning of a lifelong fascination for him. The clown series is its culmination, in which the now 100-year-old artist revisits those early memories. In December 2019 Wayne Thiebaud unveiled a selection from his clown series at the San Francisco gallery founded by his son, Paul Thiebaud. The Laguna Art Museum exhibition will be a version of the Paul Thiebaud Gallery exhibition, featuring more than forty works. Fully illustrated with 56 artwork reproductions. Essay by Dr. Julia Friedman. Interview with the artist by Janet Bishop, the Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Hardcover: 100 pages; ISBN-10: 0578798573ISBN-13: 978-0578798578
Celebrating the 100th birthday of one of America's most respected and beloved artists, Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings honors a lifetime of extraordinary achievements across many genres. Best known for his tantalizing paintings of desserts, Thiebaud has long been affiliated with Pop Art, though his body of work is far more expansive, continuing to grow as the artist approaches his milestone birthday. Across the decades, Thiebaud has explored various details of American life through his art from urban views and rural landscapes to clowns and household items all the time continuing to explore the food subjects that made him famous. Wayne Thiebaud 100 accompanies an exhibition of the same name, organized by the Crocker Art Museum. In addition to the 100 paintings, prints, and drawings featured in the exhibition, this publication includes numerous other contextual paintings by Thiebaud, art by the masters who inspired him, and photographs of the artist with family and friends, taken over the course of his extraordinary career. Hardcover : 212 pages ISBN-10 : 1087501172 Dimensions : 9.8 x 0.9 x 11.3 inches ISBN-13 : 978-1087501178
Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev Adele Marie Barker (Editor), Eliot Borenstein (Contributor), Julia Friedman (Contributor), Adam Weiner (Contributor), Elizabeth Kristofovich Zelensky (Contributor), Robert Edelman (Contributor) With the collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s, the Russian social landscape has undergone its most dramatic changes since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, turning the once bland and monolithic state-run marketplace into a virtual maze of specialty shops—from sushi bars to discotheques and tattoo parlors... (more) Paperback: 488 pages Publisher: Duke University Press Books (June 10, 1999) Language: English ISBN-10: 0822323133 ISBN-13: 978-0822323136
“A Powerless Seeker: Merezhkovsky’s Romance as Life-Writing” by Julia Friedman In Symbolism, its Origins and Consequences. Edited by Rosina Neginsky. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2010 Hardcover: 665 pages Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing New edition edition (October 1, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 1443823929 ISBN-13: 978-1443823920
“The Writing-Drawing Continuum of Alexei Remizov,” by Julia Friedman "Elective affinities" - a notion originally borrowed by Goethe for his 1809 novel of the same title from eighteenth-century chemistry - here refers to the active role of the two partners in the relationship of the pictorial and the verbal... In In Elective Affinities: Word & Image Interactions 6, 2008 Edited by Catriona McLeod, Véronique Plesch and Charlotte Schoell-Glass. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi Paperback: 422 pages Publisher: Rodopi (June 20, 2009) Language: English ISBN-10: 9042026189 ISBN-13: 978-9042026186
“Alexei Remizov’s Creative Act,” by Julia Friedman. Edited by Maurice Geracht and Frédéric Ogée. In Interfaces: Image Text Language, vol. 29, 2010
Search Blog By Categories
Search Blog By Categories
Archives
- November 2024
- October 2024
- June 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- December 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- March 2022
- January 2022
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- April 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- August 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- October 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- October 2017
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- April 2014
- September 2013
- July 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
Meta
- Log in
- Entries feed
- Comments feed
- WordPress.org
Julia Friedman
- From Sfumato to Ganzfelds November 14, 2024
  The Honarkar Foundation just published a catalogue for their current exhibition LUMINARIES OF LIGHT: PIONEERS OF CALIFORNIA LIGHT AND SPACE MOVEMENT curated by Genevieve Williams. My essay “From Sfumato to Ganzfelds” argues that in order to remove the barriers between the art and its audiences, California Light and Space artists relied on the same four […]
  jfriedman
- In search of the “problematic” October 17, 2024
  My latest article for Quillette is an update of sorts on Robert Hughes’ writings from three decades ago about the “therapeutic fallacy” and the “censorious right.” Now it is the censorious left that is swinging the bat.
  jfriedman
- A fix for loneliness October 3, 2024
  The latest issue of the Dallas-based humanities quarterly is dedicated to the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. Atheneum—the 12-acre UT Dallas campus art district designed by iconic architecture firm Morphosis. I contributed an article “Why we Need the Athenaeum” in which I argue that the Athenaeum model of public spaces is exactly what our culture […]
  jfriedman
- LACMA’s Imagined “Imagined Fronts” July 1, 2024
  My take on LACMA’s rather disappointing exhibition that tried to make the Great War relevant to museum goers in 2024.
  jfriedman
- The Perfect Trifecta June 13, 2024
  My latest article for Quillette is about the perfect trifecta of performance art, sensationalist nudity, and media attention.
  jfriedman
- The Meta of Marble April 17, 2024
  Skira Editore Milano just published a monograph on British-Iranian artist Reza Aramesh. In addition to several texts, and an interview with the artist, ACTION: BY NUMBER contains a catalogue raisonné of his work from 2002 onwards, including Aramesh’s recent marble sculpture. I discuss the art-historical genesis and cultural meaning of these spectacular and frightening works […]
  jfriedman
- I Me Mine April 6, 2024
  This article published in Quillette is a cautionary tale about what happens when while looking at a painting one only sees their own reflection. As the historian Christopher Lasch pointed out four decades ago, disproportionate concern with “identity” is directly linked to the difficulties of establishing the boundaries of selfhood. And without the certainty of […]
  jfriedman

Julia Friedman

Wayne Thiebaud 100 Catalogue essay

Search Blog By Categories

Archives

Meta

Julia Friedman