Wayne Thiebaud: The Order of Things

About the exhibition

You will see 105 paintings and drawings by the American painter Wayne Thiebaud, known for cakes, pies and gumball machines. Hyundai Card calls this the first Wayne Thiebaud retrospective in Korea, and The Korea Herald calls it the first full-scale one. Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer curated it.

The Korea Herald describes a roughly chronological route. It opens with early canvases such as Cigar Counter (1955), painted with the heavy, loose brushwork of Willem de Kooning, then moves through early-1960s paintings to beach scenes, cityscapes and portraits. It ends with One-Hundred-Year-Old Clown (2020), in white makeup and a red nose, which the Korea JoongAng Daily calls the artist's final self-portrait. The JoongAng Daily also names Salads, Sandwiches, and Desserts (1962), on loan from the Sheldon Museum of Art.

The subtitle comes from Michel Foucault's 1966 book. The JoongAng Daily reports the curators' argument that Thiebaud was at root an abstract painter, focused on structure under the frosting.

About the artist

Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021) was born in Mesa, Arizona, and died in Sacramento, California. The Smithsonian American Art Museum records a start as a freelance cartoonist in 1939, teaching at Sacramento City College from 1951 to 1959 and at the University of California, Davis, from 1959 to 1972. Thiebaud represented the United States at the São Paulo Biennial in 1968 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1985. The Korea JoongAng Daily reports that the artist appeared in two of the first pop art exhibitions, both in 1962.

Sources: americanart.si.edu