Wayne Thiebaud

Exhibit @ The Legion of Honor - Food for Thought

This week I attended the Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art exhibition at San Francisco‘s Legion of Honor Museum. It created some food for thought which I’m putting on the table here on Substack for discussion.

The premise of the exhibition is expressed in the statement “Art comes from art”, a direct quote from Mr. Thiebaud in his following observation.

“Art is not delivered like the morning paper; it has to be stolen from Mount Olympus. You don’t invent it, you find it, and you don’t find it if you’re not looking for it. Art comes from art.”

This quote reflects Thiebaud’s belief in the continuity of artistic tradition—that artists build upon the work of those who came before them.

So far so good. As a working artist and art instructor, this resonates with my personal experiences and observations about the subject I love and matches what I teach in my online and in-person classes and workshops through my non-profit company The Joy of Drawing.

Speaking of how artists learn, Mr. Thiebaud expands on his theory:

“! was interested in how artists learned, and I found that the best way to learn was to copy. That’s how the old masters did it, and I figured it was good enough for me.”

Mr. Thiwbaud had quite a sense of humor, stating he thought of himself as an “art thief”, freely admitting to the fact he often influenced by and even stole from other artists, copied some of their solutions to problems, and so forth. He was very transparent about how he learned to draw and paint and how he thought it all worked.

With this in mind, I began my visit by watching a short video about the artist shown at the exhibition entrance. It was highly informational, covering Wayne Thiebaud’s ideas about art which formed the premise for the exhibition. As an artist and art teacher with a passion for art history, I found the video inspirational as it referenced the above quotes along with interviews with Mr. Thiebaud where he expanded on his views. He is quite humorous and the video well represented his approach to the subjects of painting and teaching others to paint.

Where I began to feel uncomfortable, although I did not quite know why at the time, when the video showed examples of how Thiebaud had based his paintings on paintings by other artists as a demonstration of how he either directly copied or stole from them or incorporated what he saw into his own work. I must add, was done without decreasing the value of the final painting by Thiebaud which always had its own unique style. But the inference was that these paintings were based on paintings by others, and it came across to me that the presenters were stating this was taken directly from the artist himself.

It bothered me when I saw Thiebaud’s painting of a standing man compared to a standing clown by Watteau. The inference is drawn that Thiebaud was channeling Watteau’s painting. But what the curator failed to state what that a) this information did not come from Thiebaud himself and b) Standing Man is part of a series of paintings he did of a man in a suit, some standing one sitting and one with a woman and so forth.

Hmmm. The plot thickens.

When the video showed Thiebaud’s painting of a man and woman eating hotdogs looking pretty depressed and compared it to a painting of two people in a bar by Degas. Did Thibaud see people eating hot dogs and think about this earlier Degas painting or vice versa? It seemed like a stretch. But OK, I was willing to accept that he might have based works on earlier artists and it was just more evidence of the statement attributed to Pablo Picasso.

"Les mauvais artistes copient, les grands artistes volent."

Translation: “The artists who are bad copy, the great artists steal.”

Like Thiebaud, Picasso believed that all artists are influenced by their predecessors and contemporaries. Instead of mere imitation, Picasso suggested that great artists assimilate ideas from various sources, transforming them into something new and distinct. This idea implies a deeper engagement with art history, where the artist not only acknowledges other works but also reinvents and evolves them, adding their own unique voice.

By way of example, Cubism, the the art form that launched Picasso into the art world with his painting of Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, was a direct result of his exposure to African art which occurred after seeing a figurine Henri Matisse had just purchased. Picasso was so taken with the figurine he borrowed it and went in search of more, which led him to the dusty Trocadero Museum which housed work from different cultures brought back to Europe by travelers and so forth. Picasso wrote about the huge influence this had on him and how it launched him into his long career as an innovator:

“I was struck by these sculptures and their eloquence. They had a poetic form and a power that was completely unknown to me at the time. I said to myself that these were the prototypes I was looking for.”

Following Picasso’s lead, other artists of the time visited the same museum and were equally astonished: two examples I have studied would be the works of two artists I admire greatly, Modigliani and Alberto Giacometti.

I could give many other examples, but one is particularly important to our discussion: Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent came upon his artistic career later in his life and was mostly self-taught. He would go to the museum in Holland where he found the drawings of Jean-Francois Millet known for his realistic depictions of peasant life and rural landscapes. Millet's works often highlighted the dignity of agricultural labor and the struggles of rural communities, a subject that appealed to Van Gogh.

Van Gogh copied several of Millet's paintings to study his techniques and themes. He was particularly drawn to Millet’s ability to evoke emotion and convey narratives through his subjects. By recreating Millet's works, Van Gogh sought to internalize these qualities and understand how to express them in his own style.

A perfect example would be Millet’s painting The Sower. Compare this to several of Van Gogh’s paintings of the same name.

Van Gogh followed the same path when he fell in love with the Japanese woodcuts flooding Paris in the mid to late 19th century. Like other artists, these wonderful prints changed the way he painted and saw the world and he had them postered all over his studio and made direct tracings and copies to understand them. He was preceded by Claude Monet whose artistic development took a quantum leap after he was exposed to these same prints. In fact, this influenced many other artists to the point they became known as “Japonistes”. One such artist was Pierre Bonnard, a particular influence on my own painting from way back to my days at art college in the UK.

So this is nothing new, and Wayne Thiebaud was saying the same thing as many of his artistic predecessors.

So what is my problem with the exhibition?

Well, to understand it you would have to visit the museum yourself which I invite you to do if you live close to San Francisco. As one enters the gallery there is a presentation of art that Thibaud himself collected and art he admired.

Then you enter the gallery itself starting with some of the works that launched him into prosperity - his depictions of different cakes, pies, and so forth.

These were the result of his finding his voice upon his return from studying in New York. They were not taken from real life. According to Thiebaud, he began by creating some basic forms such as cylinders, slides of cylinders, cones, spheres, and other geometric shapes making them into cakes, pies, and ice creams. using impasto paint that feels and looks like cake frosting or ice cream and using colors that were good enough to eat! His work was a sensation when he exhibited in New York and history was made.

However, he changed directions, and in the next room you will find his figure painting which became his next focus. From there one enters the final room which features his architectural paintings of San Francisco and a few of his wonderful landscapes, some from life and some not.

All great art and wonderful to see. So once again, where is my problem?

Here it is: Beside every one of these paintings is posted a small photo of a painting or paintings by other artists. The way the exhibit is presented, one would think these artworks were actually the paintings or painters that Wayne Thiebaud copied or stole from to create the work one was viewing. Such was my own impression as I walked through the gallery. The three people who accompanied me had the same impression, in fact, when we met up, one of them commented that she liked the fact Thiebaud was so transparent about the fact he showed the paintings from which he stole.

Something about this didn’t sit right with me so, as I often do, I started my own research on the matter and I realized the artworks presented at the side of each painting were selected by the curators of the exhibition! There is absolutely no evidence they were the actual works that Thiebaud studied or used or anything for that matter.

There are some obvious exceptions however - Thiebaud’s own take on painting his wife in the bath clearly, this goes straight to Pierre Bonnard’s paintings of his wife in the bath. Of course, Thiebaud’s work is entirely different. But one can definitely see clear parallels between the two, just as there are parallels when one looks at Matisse’s paintings of bathers, compared to the paintings of bathers by Paul Cezanne who Matisse greatly admired (and, in fact, purchased a Cezanne painter of bathers and kept it in his gallery throughout his long career).

What bothers me about this is that nowhere in the initial video I watched or at the entrance to the gallery did it state that the images shown were selected by the curators and were not based on any comment, quote or statement by Thiebaud himself.

Had this been done I would have been quite fine as it is their opinion and not a fact. The curators are welcome to their opinion and I do not have to agree with it if I know that is an opinion. But the way the exhibition was presented, it came across as fact, and that is my problem in a nutshell.

Perhaps I missed the message that these images were selected by the curator? When I went to ChatGPT and initially asked for examples of how Thiebaud stole from or copied other artists I got the exact repetition of the examples given in the video shown at the start of the exhibition. When I asked ChatGPT if this was, in face from Mr. Thiebaud himself or from curators and/or art critics I received the answer that ALL of these examples and any others like it come from curators and critics, NONE from Theibaud himself.

So I ask the question: Are the curators interpreting and forwarding their ideas as being those of the artist himself? And does that sit right with you?

If it could be made clearer in the exhibition I would be a happy camper. Instead, I am posting this blog hoping that others can jump in and make your opinions known on this food for thought.

And again, if I missed the fact the curators did clearly state the photos were from them and not the artist, my deepest apologies, but perhaps they could show me where this is so stated.

Please leave your thoughts on any of the subjects covered here including the exhibit upon which I am commenting.