Sandra C. Haynes Podcast #12 Wayne Thiebaud Dark Cherries (1984) etching and aquatint Artist-in-Residence Fine Art Collection Shatford Library and Boone Sculpture Garden Pasadena City College April 2009 Wayne Thiebaud loves food. That is, he is well known for creating images of food. And that is what he left Pasadena City College, as his offering, at the conclusion of his Artist-in-Residency in March of 1996----a monochrome etching/aquatint of a small, off-white bowl of succulent-looking, dark cherries. Thiebaud is perhaps most famous for his frosted cakes, built up layer upon layer of thick strokes of oil paint, that seem to perfectly emulate a decadent, buttercream frosting. During his residency, he demonstrated for our students his methodical technique of applying thick globs and strokes of color to build one of these extraordinary cakes. In a consumer-driven society, Thiebaud's food paintings have been described as "...observations of how our society ritualizes its gastronomic experiences:..." (Tsujimoto, 27). And although Thiebaud has consistently said that he chooses subjects for his paintings and prints "primarily for the formal problems they pose," he has also said, "I'm interested in foods generally which have been fooled with ritualistically, displays contrived and arranged in certain ways to tempt us or to seduce us or to religiously transcend us." (Tsujimoto, 53, 27) Born in Mesa Arizona in 1920, Wayne Thiebaud was brought up in Southern California. He attended Long Beach City College before serving in the Air Force from 1942-1945. An early interest in drawing and cartooning set him in the direction of commercial art as an illustrator and designer. Thiebaud eventually moved to Northern California where he received both a BA (1951) and MA (1953) in art from California State College (now University), Sacramento. He began teaching at Sacramento Junior (now City) College, then at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), where he taught printmaking. By 1960, Thiebaud was teaching at the University of California, Davis and had begun painting still lifes of food----pastries, candy and sandwiches. Since that time, he has also actively translated and transformed these same painted still life subjects into prints. (Tsujimoto, 55) Thiebaud is also proficient as a landscape painter (His cityscapes of San Francisco can give a viewer vertigo.) and a figure painter. In all of his choices of subject matter, Thiebaud is preoccupied with the subject as a way to analyze and investigate basic formal problems in painting. His admiration and study of artists of the past, such as the 18th century French still life painter Jean-Baptiste-SimŽon Chardin, comes from a respect for Chardin's brilliant translation of paint into emulations of commonplace reality, but especially from Chardin's masterful manipulation of the formal elements of line, shape, color, light and space. To talk more about Thiebaud's work, and most especially, our print, Dark Cherries , I have asked my colleague Stan Baden, a master print maker, to join me in taking a look at the intaglio process of etching and aquatint used by Thiebaud to create the work. Sandy: So Stan, welcome. As you know, I've asked you to join me in looking at our Wayne Thiebaud print called Dark Cherries. I have some questions that I thought would be interesting to ask you. Could you explain, first of all, the letters "AP" and the number 3 in the lower left-hand corner? Stan: It is written by the artist in pencil and it designates that there would be an edition of prints that would be called the body and then there would be the head copies, which would be the "AP 3"-what this one is. It refers to the fact that it's the property of the artist and it means an Artist's Proof. Sandy: And what about the number 3? Stan: On this one, I believe it means that there were three prints designated as artist's proofs. Sandy: Great. Thanks. Dark Cherries is described as an intaglio-process etching and aquatint. Could you explain what is involved in that process in general, and perhaps how Thiebaud has manipulated the process in Dark Cherries? Stan: This is probably done on a copper plate. And in an intaglio or etching, the image is cut below the surface and the lines have been etched and the plate gets inked up and then rubbed off with a very stiff cloth called "tarleton." And as the printer, and in this case, maybe the artist, rubs the plate with the tarleton, which is very stiff and it doesn't go into the lines. And when the plate is all cleaned up, the ink remains below the surface and in order for it to be printed, a wet piece of paper is placed on top of the plate and it is run through an etching press. It would have wool blankets on top of the paper that would push the paper down into the recessed, etched lines and pull the ink out. Sandy: Wow, that's a much more complex process than we might imagine from initially looking at the piece. Can you look more closely at the Thiebaud print and see how he may have further manipulated the etching process? Talk a little bit about the word "aquatint." Stan: Well, aquatint refers to "aqua" or water and it refers to the process of adding a watercolor-look to a print. It's done by applying a fine layer of rosin and melting it onto the plate and then putting the plate into acid for a shorter period of time than it would take to create a hard line. In doing so, you can create really delicate and subtle nuances of tone. Sandy: Is aquatint done after the initial etching of the plate? Stan: Yes, generally. Sandy: Where do we see that effect in the Thiebaud? Stan: It's on the bowl. It's throughout the background. It's negative space and positive space at the same time. In this print it looks like there are two different kinds of line. There's an etched line where it would be etched much longer than an aquatint. And in the aquatint is where the tonal areas would be. And so, the etched line is a very clean and precise area-but then there is also a fuzzier dark line, which indicates to me that the artist went at the plate directly with a very sharp tool and drew. Sandy: Yes, you mentioned earlier that you thought that Thiebaud might have used another process, along with etching and aquatint? Stan: Yeah, as I mentioned, it looks to me like he directly worked on the plate. And in that case, it would be called a drypoint, ---created with a very sharp tool called a needle tool. Thiebaud would draw the line but instead of removing the copper, a deep line with a burr is created. That line is rougher and it holds more ink. And consequently, that area on the print looks much darker. Sandy: So where do we see that, in some of the cherries? Stan: Yes, it's seen in the cherries and it really shows up on some of the stems. Stan: One thing I'd like to mention about this, that I find fascinating myself --- as a printer, is that Thiebaud is attracted to print making not for the fact that you can make multiples and then consequently there is a commercial value that you can sell to a broader market. He is really attracted to the qualities in and of itself. The friction that is generated when you drag a needle tool through the copper---- It holds up the hand, so that the line is a lot rougher than if you are just using a pencil on a piece of paper. And there is no other way to get that look except in an etching. He capitalizes on it. And it's odd the way he is able to control it. For me, it's a very difficult medium. Whereas his paintings are very luscious and smooth and flowing, he is able to capture that same look in this intaglio print here and in others. It's just not a medium that is natural and logical to use, but the results do parallel his paintings. Sandy: That's a very interesting observation. You know Stan, Thiebaud's art has been called "realistic," in part because he paints the mundane objects of everyday existence. He has referred to himself as a realist, because of the often, precise observation of subjects that is evident in a work such as Dark Cherries. Could you explain how abstraction and the formal elements of artistic creation are also a very strong aspect of this work, Dark Cherries? Perhaps we have more of an opportunity to analyze it formally, because the monochromatic nature of the palette in this print allows us to look more closely at other formal elements aside from color. Stan: What's really nice in this case is there's not the distraction of color. It relies so heavily on other formal elements. He's got a symmetrical composition here but he invaded some of it, with the positioning of the stems of the cherries. But it's still very carefully balanced. We were talking earlier about the theatrical aspects of his work. And as I have been staring at this print, it has been growing on me more and more how the subject looks like it is under a spotlight and how the background and foreground seem to merge and it's really interesting how its keeps your eye moving. Sandy: His tendency is to create a work that is the essence of form-whatever form he may be describing. And I think we truly have that represented here, as you said. That strong theatrical lighting, that very interesting shadow beneath the bowl that neither you nor I can explain in terms of its source. And we wonder how it could possibly be real. So, could you talk a little bit more about that essence of reduction of form in this work? Stan: Thiebaud is pretty complicated. His imagery is so recognizable and in some of the interviews I have seen with him, he alludes to the subject matter as being irrelevant. So I find it very interesting that often he is dealing with something that is an abstraction and sometimes the meaning of the image itself is gone and he is simply dealing with an abstraction. Sandy: Stan, I want to thank you so much for joining me here to take a closer look at Wayne Thiebaud's etching and for sharing your expertise. Stan: You're welcome. Thank you for the opportunity. Sandra C. Haynes Podcast #12 Wayne Thiebaud References: Adler and Company Gallery, San Francisco. Wayne Thiebaud. http://www.adlerandco.com/thiebaud/index.html Baden, Stan. Conversation. 20 March, 2009. Benson, A. LeGrace G., Shearer, David H.R. "Wayne Thiebaud: an Interview." Leonardo, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 65-72, MIT Press, January, 1969. Brown, Kathan. Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively: The Art of Etching and the Truth of Life. New York: Crown Point Books/Prestel Publishing, 2006. Marechal-Workman, Andree. "Wayne Thiebaud: Beyond the Cityscapes," Smithsonian Studies in American Art, Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 1987, pp, 35-51. Nash, Steven A., Gopnik, Adam. Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000. Tsujimoto, Karen. Wayne Thiebaud. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1985. Haynes(c)2009 1