Over the course of a century, Wayne Thiebaud has made many original contributions to the history of artistic achievement. In addition to now iconic subjects — his vibrant color, the piercing clarity of his light, the muscular confidence of his brushstrokes — these gestures are immediately recognizable as Thiebaud’s own. They are his signature, as much as the pink heart that adorns his prints in the complementary exhibition, Working Proof. He crafted these tactics — Thiebaud often calls them tricks — by way of his profound engagement with the history of art: Looking back has always been Thiebaud’s generative force, coupled with a continuing interest and appreciation of modern and contemporary art.

Thiebaud developed his signature style with deference to the history of art. He sees himself, in his own words, as aspiring to the “grand tradition” of painting. In a recent conversation I asked him what exactly he means. “Well, simply said, the canon,” he said. “Those proven achievements, almost miracles, within various conventions which painting has endured throughout the world, and that's what I call the grand continuing tradition.” The artists in Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation share Thiebaud’s penchant to mine the history of art, although each with different ends in mind. Robert Colescott, for example, reveled in the rich history of painting — its oversights as much as its achievements. While his work was revisionist, he nevertheless proudly asserted, “It’s the grand tradition in Western art that I’m part of.”[1]  Both artists provide countless examples of how they found inspiration by exploring the past. Colescott made history his subject. Thiebaud is interested in structure, in his words, how the work is “put together.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent Artist Project provides an excellent example of what Thiebaud gleans from deep engagement with historical paintings. In his video, Thiebaud recounts the treasure he finds in small details of Rosa Bonheur’s monumental painting, The Horse Fair, 1852-55. But more than just surface effects, Thiebaud traces the imaginative order that Bonheur imposed on her world. As Jed Perl, one of Thiebaud’s favorite art writers once described about the artist André Derain in the New York Review of Books: “He recovers, through the manipulation of pencil, pen, and brush, the movements of older imaginations.”

And Thiebaud puts them to work. His favorite antidote to “artist’s block” is to copy old masters. “Copying is a very important adjunct to teaching, and it’s underserved, so I practice it fundamentally with students — have them make forgeries,” he explained to me. “The one for Walt Kuhn, an artist I greatly admire, was an attempt to make as close a copy as I could, and I made it as a gift for Betty Jean’s birthday.” In describing a copy he made last year of The Bridge at Narni by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Thiebaud talked about how challenging the process was, and how much he learned: “Well, you copy it, and you feel the physicality, and how he expressed the physicality of it.” It’s a sentiment shared by artist Jason Stopa about his paintings in New Generation.

When Thiebaud came of age as an artist in the late 1950s, looking to the history of art was, to put it simply, wildly unpopular. Painting recognizable images of his everyday world was beyond the pale. Instead, the art world gave preference to expressions of the new, work that signaled progression or advancement. In an essay about the painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Zadie Smith summarizes the art world’s mid-20th century preference for the avant-garde, a predilection she positions as still at work today:

“The figurative was fundamentally nostalgic; its subject matter was kitsch; it was too easily manipulated for the purposes of propaganda, both political and commercial. Sentimental scenes of human life were, after all, what the Nazis and the Stalinists had championed. They were what the admen of Madison Avenue utilized every day. Meanwhile, the abstract sought to continue, in the realm of the visual, the modernist critique of the self. But, even when a critic allows for the somewhat antique formulation of these arguments (…), there is still something about the vicarious emotion provoked by the figurative that must be explained away or excused.”    

Thiebaud’s small still life paintings of humble everyday objects contrasted sharply with the grand gestures of Abstract Expressionism that then held sway.

He was, oddly enough, among a vanguard of artists who would commit art world apostasy in the early 1960s by exhibiting realistic paintings, crafted with technical expertise. At the time Thiebaud’s contrarian approach was received by critics as out-of-step, misperceived as proto Pop Art, or worse yet, not very good Pop Art. As his colleague Alex Katz has recalled about his figurative paintings from the period, “My paintings were totally unfashionable.”

For decades, critics interpreted Thiebaud’s avidity for tradition as idiosyncratic at best, if not determinedly retrograde. Now we can see that he was holding open a door, serving as a champion for artists who forged their path forward by looking back, learning and assimilating the history of art. Yiadom-Boakye readily cites historical precedents for her painting, with John Singer Sargent and his British counterpart, Walter Sickert, as regular sources. She fluidly riffs on portraiture’s long history, and graciously acknowledges her debts: “All of my uses of red,” she has explained in reference to Singer Sargent’s, Dr. Pozzi at Home, “hark back to that painting.”[2]

The "New Generation” of like-minded artists gathered in this exhibition, working across different styles and modes of expression, forecast the future of painting by finding meaning and reinvention in the medium’s history. In looking back, Thiebaud was their guide. His tour of Bonheur’s painting concludes: "they’re all cheap tricks, in a way, made into a masterpiece. This is what you’re going to have to do if you’re going to be a painter — employ all that heritage. It’s a wonderful challenge, and we’re damn lucky to be in this business.”

Rachel Teagle, Founding Director

[1] Holland Cotter, “Unrepentant Offender of Almost Everyone,” The New York Times, June 8, 1997,      35. 

[2] Andrea Schlieker, “Quiet Fires: The Paintings of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye,” in Isabella Maidment and Andrea Schlieker eds., Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Fly in League with the Night (2020 Distributed Art Publishers)       19.