In the Collection of the Norton Simon Museum.

June 26–October 5, 2009

“You can eat a hundred hamburgers, and they all taste different; some are good and
many are bad. You can’t tell what food tastes like by looking at it,
any more than you can tell what people are like merely by looking at
them.”*

Sweets & Treats: Wayne Thiebaud in the Collection of the Norton Simon Museum
presents a selection of prints created by the artist in the 1960s.
Although Thiebaud is primarily known for his thickly textured paintings
depicting angel-food cake topped with creamy frosting, the artworks in Sweets & Treats
show us a different side to his artistic practice by shedding the
texture of his oils and engaging the imagery only in the print format.

The prints in this exhibition strip away the formal aspects of painting and
let the viewer focus on the subject matter itself. Two-dimensional and
monochromatic, the images ask us to ponder the exact meaning of nine
slices of pie. Moving into the realm of multiples, in which prints,
woodcuts, etchings and lithographs can be mechanically reproduced,
Thiebaud shows us that his work is not just about the surface, texture
and relief of painting; it is also about the abundance and uniformity
apparent in every pie case in every diner in the country.

Thiebaud’s prints show his struggle with “a play on the closeness of similarities
and dissimilarities.” This contradiction is represented in a lineup of
seemingly identical pastries, each still retaining its individuality
based on variations from recipe to recipe, baker to baker and diner to
diner. Through the print medium, Thiebaud refers to a “consciousness of
simultaneity” and sets up an allegory in which we must consider how
alike we are to one another, yet also realize the “little
discriminations and little insights” that set us apart as individuals.
While his rich paintings magnify these discrepancies, his prints make
the viewer focus on the idea that there is a collective consciousness.

* Wayne Thiebaud, from an interview conducted in 1968 with then-Curator at the Pasadena Art Museum, John Coplans

Slice of Cream Pie with Cherry (or ‘Piece of Boston Cream Pie’), 1964