Delicious: The Life & Art of Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne paints these pictures from his memories, mostly from his childhood. His mother, Alice, was a wonderful cook and baker. On rainy days she set up art projects for Wayne and his sister, Marjory Jean. Sometimes their uncle Jess, a cartoonist, came over and drew pictures for them. Wayne decided he wanted to be a cartoonist, too. He never dreamed one day he would become one of the best known painters of the twentieth century."
-Delicious: The Life & Art of Wayne Thiebaud
(this is a review of a children's nonfiction book about Wayne Thiebaud, written by Susan Goldman Rubin).
One of the interesting things from this book is the fact that Wayne didn't want his art to be categorized as Pop Art. For some reason, Wayne refused have him and his paintings be associated with the other Pop Artists of his day, but his 1963 piece, Pie Counter, is right there on page 483 of the textbook in the Pop Art chapter, so too bad for him.
After Wayne planned on becoming a cartoonist, he eventually started working for Disney during the Great Depression. In WWII, he made a comic strip for the army base camp, and took little inbetween jobs making posters for movie theatres and whatnot, before he was encouraged to try painting and came out with his "edible" paintings he is most known for today (although he did paint non-edible things, like sunglasses [as in Five Rows of Sunglasses, 1963]).
Delicious also talks about little details and things Wayne noticed when he was younger, and how they made their way into his paintings. For instance, the way the crops on his grandparent's farm grew in tidy rows, or how he used to work at an ice cream stand at a cafe at Long Beach, which eventually ended up in his paintings.
Altogether this book is very small and readable. Each page is a different colour, so hooray for the person who helped design the layout of this book.
Comments
Post a Comment