Wayne Thiebaud enriched the lives of countless students and colleagues during his long association with UC Davis, which he prolonged through teaching past his retirement (he last participated in an independent study group in 2012) and by supporting our visiting artists. His love of teaching and painting were a continuing inspiration.
Rather than add more words of appreciation, I’d like to direct attention to a painting of his that extends the range of his desserts into the realm of visual consumption, embracing the sensory enjoyment of seeing that underlies all his painting.
Untitled (Rows of Glasses), 2000, oil on linen
The constantly varied eye-glasses in this painting playfully transgress the standardized repetition of Pop Art: in their varied irregularity, each lens offers a distinctive landscape, collectively celebrating a multiplicity of gazes, a visual democracy.
He probably painted it from memory; tensions between his training in commercial illustration and the demands of perceptual painting constantly stimulated such experiments. Here, he elevates us above the table top, evading the perceptual conventions of perspective, onto a plane of imagination (is the lower blue zone the vertical edge of the table or a design decision?).
Always skeptical of grandiose claims for “art”, Wayne once commented that art would indeed save the world - not with “heroic gestures” but with “nuances of fact.” I wish we could talk more about all this.