Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation

Painting by Robert Colescott of a cake with a boot on it.
Robert Colescott, Artistry and Reality (Happy Birthday), 1980. Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 18 in. (40.6 x 45.7 cm).Courtesy of the Erle and Pinkie Flad Collection. © 2020 The Robert H. Colescott Separate Property Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Cleber Bonato.

The profound influence of Wayne Thiebaud on a new generation of artists is front and center in this celebration of the longtime UC Davis art professor’s centennial. Pairings explore how Thiebaud forecast the future of painting through his personal journey to find meaning and reinvention in the medium’s history in ways that are both current and timeless. Works by contemporary artists who have been inspired by Thiebaud as a fellow painter as well as those of former students reveal unexpected connections and sources of inspiration.

Curators: Rachel Teagle and Susie Kantor

An exhibition featuring

Andrea Bowers, Julie Bozzi (’74, M.F.A. ’76), Christopher Brown (M.F.A. ’76), Robert Colescott, Gene Cooper, Richard Crozier (M.F.A. ’74), April Glory Funcke (’87, M.F.A. ’89), Fredric Hope, Alex Israel, Grace Munakata (’80, M.F.A. ’85), Bruce Nauman (’66 M.A.), Jason Stopa, Vonn Cummings Sumner (’98, M.F.A. ’00), Ann Harrold Taylor (M.F.A. ’85), Michael Tompkins (’81, M.F.A. ’83), Clay Vorhes, Patricia Wall (’72), Jonas Wood and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

On view winter–June 13, 2021

Check back here for the latest opening information and visit our Exhibition in Progress website to meet the artists and go behind the scenes at the museum.

 

Working Proof: Wayne Thiebaud as Printmaker

Gumball machine print
Wayne Thiebaud, Gumball Machine, 1971/2003. Linocut with watercolor hand additions, 30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm). Fine Arts Collection, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis. Gift of Wayne and Betty Jean Thiebaud. © 2020 Wayne Thiebaud / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

Although Wayne Thiebaud is better known as a painter, he has also been a prolific printmaker, working in print for most of his career and producing over 200 designs. Drawn from the university’s Fine Arts Collection, this exhibition features numerous printing “proofs,” many worked by hand, that were created as part of the printmaking process. Shown adjacent to Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation, these works underscore the importance of printmaking in Thiebaud’s artistic practice, as well as his dedication to donating works to the university that can function as teaching tools.

Curator: Quintana Heathman

On view winter–June 13, 2021
Check back here for the latest opening information.

 

Black and white photo of two hands holding a book with the image of a winged man on the front.
Arnold Joseph Kemp, POSSIBLE BIBLIOGRAPHY, 2015-20. 52 b&w archival inkjet prints on Canson Infinity Platine Fibre Rag; Edition of seven with two artist's proofs. 10.75 x 8.18 x 2.38 in.; 6.83 x 10 in. each. Courtesy of the artist and Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland. © Arnold Joseph Kemp

Arnold Joseph Kemp:
I would survive. I could survive. I should survive.

The exhibition’s title, taken from a snapshot of a note in the artist’s studio, references interdisciplinary artist Arnold J. Kemp’s unflinching commitment to a politics embedded within a language of abstraction. His work asks us to consider the sensorial gestures that form the self and a people, the personal and the political, the historical and the present. Kemp stages encounters that invite the viewer into the artist’s aesthetic considerations of himself and the world that makes him. It is within this space that we are able to join him in considering how we are made and how we make ourselves.

Guest Curator: Sampada Aranke (Ph.D. ’13)

On view winter–April 25, 2021
Check back here for the latest opening information.