Customer Reviews

Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
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I purchased this book right after walking through the Thiebaud retrospective at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. I usually don't like to buy books after I've seen the work firsthand as the color never compares with the paintings I had just seen. In this case, though, I was impressed with the reproduction color. As an artist I get to use this book to study how Thiebaud makes his works "sparkle" by painting one color next to another.

I own lots of art books, but this is already one of my favorites. I stare and stare at these pictures and marvel at what he has done. The painting is so simple at first glance, and so much more complex and fascinating the longer I look. If you are a painter, there is very much to be learned from these paintings. The phrase "paint lovingly applied" in the editorial review is most apt--and as a result, one loves looking at it. This man is really a PAINTER, an artist who revives one's faith in painting here at the turn of a century that has seen more than its share of charlatans and feeble talents. Everything he paints looks profoundly delicious, and the landscapes and cityscapes from the 80's and 90's are like thrilling dreams. The book is a revelation!

After working this past summer in the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC and being there for the opening of the Thiebaud show, I can certainly say that I have become filled with a nostalgic longing and a love for both Thiebaud's art as well as the manner in which he comports himself as an artist and as a person. I could have received no better gift from my supervisor at the end of my summer employment than this beautiful and gentle book. Though certainly there is nothing like looking at the works of art themselves, this book was fully capable of stirring my memory...much the same way as Thiebaud's art itself had a few weeks prior. This book is a highly treasured part of my collection of art books...truly a high point of my books in general, and I would highly recommend it to those well versed in the works of this gentleman as well as those who have not yet had the pleasure of his honest and warm friendship. ~greg

Remember that old Frank Sinatra song that served as an inspirational film for rainy day grade school entertainment in the 50's? Well, if there is an artist who has captured the imagination and dreamy reveries of life in the past century, the quieter, more ebulliently committed time to joy and the simple treasures here, that man is Wayne Thiebaud. WAYNE THIEBAUD: A PAINTINGS RETROSPECTIVE is a beautifully designed catalogue raisonne of the pop artist's oeuvre that toured the country a few years ago. Organized by curator Steven A. Nash of San Francisco (the artist's home) this book is beautifully illustrated with all of the iconic images of pies, cakes, candy apples, etc. that everyone associates with Thiebaud. Yet it gives equal time to the inimitable 'landscapes' of the hilly terrain that is San Francisco, valleys of Northern California, and beaches. Thiebaud's ability to flatten vistas into geometric patterns can be compared to Richard Diebenkorn's purely abstract Ocean Park Series of paintings: both artists understand space, color, and the excitement of the line.

Accompanying this 'delicious' array of Thiebaud paintings are essays by both Nash and by Adam Gopnik of 'New Yorker' who aptly praises Thiebaud as a man in the same company of Americana as Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and John Updike! That about sums it all up and this essay alone would be reason enough to buy this important volume of American art history. Simply superb. Grady Harp, October, 2004

The fact that Wayne Thiebaud is one of the most important American painters alive is undisputable. Now, this does not mean that any comprehensive book on his output should deserve 5 stars. This particular publication, the catalogue for a 2000 retrospective at the Whitney Museum in NYC, enables the reader to discover the whole range of the artist's paintings: cakes, bakery counters, tie racks, pin-ball machines, but also portraits (of his wife) and more recent Californian landscapes. The text is a fairly good, though not groundbreaking, description of his art, but the main drawback lies in the illustrations: I found the colors somewhat faded and, above all, there are no magnified details of the works, which I consider especially disappointing for such an artist as Thiebaud whose distinctive and thick brushstrokes and layers of paint are characteristic parts of his art.

Yet, it is the only significant publication on the artist, so let us not be too harsh on the rating...

I had ordered this book to share it with my adult painting students in a class I teach. It was to inspire a lesson about painting pictures of pastries. What I found was so much more. The book provides an informative overview of a variety of types of work by this artist, both realist and pop artist, with fine quality reproductions of the art work.

I looked at this book in a museum bookstore immediately after viewing a huge retrospective of Thiebaud's paintings. I was going to buy this book, but after looking through it, I decided not to. Many of the paintings I had just seen in person were reproduced in this book. While I understand that reproductions are never as good as seeing the artwork in person, I was stunned by how drastically these reproductions failed to capture the vibrancy of the original paintings. The images were extremely grayed out and faded, and didn't even come close to capturing the actual colors in his work. Because Thiebaud's work relies so much on color, this was really a bummer. The book did include tons of color reproductions and a good cross section of his work. I would recommend this book to someone who is interested in seeing his paintings, but isn't very intersted in his use of color. For someone who is fascinated by his sophisticated and luminous colors, though, I would not recommend this book.

This is the definitive book on the works of Wayne Thiebaud, which accompanied the very successful exhibition at the Whitney Museum. Thiebaud is best known for his hyper-realistic paintings of food, so luscious and sensual that they have universal appeal. When Theibaud first started painting in this style, he was compared to the Pop Artists, such as Warhol, Wesselmann, Indiana and Ramos. However, Thiebaud always tried to set himself apart from these artists, because although he agreed with their use of repetitive images as a comment on the banality of American consumerism, he wanted to paint well and believed that a series of soup cans painted poorly did not reflect his goal as an artist. It took many years after the Pop Artists became famous for Thiebaud to achieve the recognition that he deserved, partly because he was considered a regional artist who painted in California. This book is the seminal treatise on the works of Thiebaud and is therefore a must read.

This book has a wonderful collection of his work from the 60's to the present time. His style and view of everyday life is both inspiring and dramatic, sometimes his perspective is unnerving as well. It is a great book for those who love realism and nostalgia, with a twist.

I've loved Wayne Thiebaud ever since I was a kid, leafing through my dad's art books - and now that I bake so much I have an even deeper fondness for the crisp cake and pastry paintings. This book covers a wide range of Thiebaud's work, from food to portraits to landscapes (especially my favorites, the vertigo-inspiring San Francisco hills!), and all are reproduced in beautiful crisp prints. The book is big enough to give you clear images but not so big that it won't fit on a bookshelf.

The narrative throughout is also well written, if you can ever bring yourself to read rather than just dreamily flipping through the images.

If you're a Thiebaud fan, I suggest you get this book, I doubt you'll be disappointed!