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Born in Mesa, Arizona, in 1920, he grew in up Long Beach, California. Thiebaud’s route to teaching wasn’t a straight line. He loves teaching, in part because he feels it’s a way for him to keep learning.” “I called him Professor Thiebaud for the first couple of years I knew him - it’s how he encounters the world. “His depth of knowledge is astonishing, and the most special moments in my relationship with him have been going to museums and looking at paintings with him. “Wayne Thiebaud is the best art historian I know,” said Rachel Teagle, founding director of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis. As they reflected on the impact he’s had during his four-decade tenure as he approached the landmark birthday, they described a man deeply dedicated to painting and teaching and whose lessons extended far beyond the classroom. This low-key narrative of Wayne Thiebaud, professor, read familiarly to his friends, colleagues and former students.

Yet when his 10th cover for The New Yorker magazine, of a double scoop of ice cream, was published in August, his contributor note simply read, “Wayne Thiebaud is a professor emeritus of art at the University of California, Davis.” These are the Wikipedia highlights of Wayne Thiebaud, American artist, that the world knows. He continues to be a prolific force, showing well-regarded new work at the Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San Francisco and Acquavella Galleries in New York. He has been awarded the National Medal of Arts (1994) and given the university’s highest honor, the UC Davis Medal (2009).

First jasper johns slice license#

His style is instantly recognizable, whether it’s the row of palm trees on the California Arts license plate he created in 1994 or iconic works that continue to set new auction records, such as Encased Cakes, or Four Pinball Machines (1962), auctioned by Christie’s in July. He is one of America’s most famous living painters, beloved for his realist still-lifes depicting desserts and diner food, figurative works and California landscapes. “By keeping it immediate and real, whether it’s the observation of cream cake or the central importance of teaching freshmen, that is an ethos.” The fact that “someone of that stature is in the slide library putting slides together for an undergraduate lecture - that’s actual greatness.”Īs Sadler would continue to learn, Thiebaud’s accessibility and “everyday-ness,” not to mention his intellect and razor-sharp memory, were key to both his art and teaching. While Sadler shuffled through dozens of slides, Thiebaud always knew exactly which handful he needed for, say, an exercise comparing works by Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt and Robert Rauschenberg.

“And then, one day, I’m in the slide library, and I’ve been mulling over Thiebaud’s titanic reputation, and I look across the table and realize … that’s Thiebaud!”Īlthough the realization took “an embarrassingly long time,” Sadler said, one of his initial impressions was correct: Thiebaud had retired in 1990 as professor emeritus, yet had continued to teach, unpaid, into the 2000s.