America's foremost dessert artist says it loud: Pumpkin pie
Pumpkin Cloud is Wayne Thiebaud's cover of the New Yorker's food issue. What does it mean? "Perhaps cheery optimists will hope that the 'Pumpkin Cloud' will sprinkle extra whipped cream on the pie, in a sort of Big Rock Candy Mountain kind of fantasy, but I see nothing cheery about the image," NYer-watching Emdashes says. "Thiebaud's painting reminds me that we're never entirely free from worries." I respect this but see the cloud is an expression of taste creation.
Whatever your take, representing humanity is a credit to pumpkin pie, for sure, especially over sweet potato. But to understand the esteem, you have to understand Thiebaud's status in the dessert art world.
This is the man who painted Pies, Pies, Pies and Pie Case and so many more. From a NYT book review, "Delicious: The Life and Art of Wayne Thiebaud, is the story of a happy man known for his happy paintings of cakes and pies." Pieces of Pumpkin got $2 million-plus at Christie's.
One artist quotes him on theory: "Color basically is a problem similar to that of size. Well, pumpkin pie color is one color, damn it, and it is an ochre with some orange in it… but when one mixes them together and puts it on a white canvas, the result looks like pudding not the color of a pumpkin pie… why? It lacks life, vitality — one must add patches of orange, of blue, of other colors, in fact, a mosaic of colors to give it some semblance of the pumpkin color one sees in reality."
Best quote from the Web? "People ask me why I don't do a nice pretty Viennese cake or spaghetti. I don't know anything about it. I'd have to be Jackson Pollock to do spaghetti." Interestingly, I can't find anything from Thiebaud, Mr. Pie-as-Art, depicting sweet potato pie. Who would he have to be to do sweet potato? A simpler-orange-loving Jim Davis?
Of course I kid. Garfield's Thanksgiving strongly endorses pumpkin pie.
December 3rd, 2009 at 5:44 AM
I see that the 'cloud' is made from whipped cream, apparently because the pie is too earth-bound. In fact, the most interesting things in that photo are the cloud, the crust, the pie pan and the table-or-whatever. We all know what the least interesting thing in that picture is.
Sweet potato pies are orange because orange, of course, is the color of goodness. Brown is…well, you know what brown is.
December 3rd, 2009 at 9:36 AM
He had an exhibit at the Corcoran about 7 years ago and my mother and I went — amazing stuff and so simple, but he'll be the first to tell you that his painting of cake, pies and cookies are not the way he expected to be known as an artist.
December 5th, 2009 at 9:40 AM
Speaking of food and artistic interpretation, here's the process reversed: "A self-taught baker, Thompson began his career making lemon meringue pies based on the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud for the cafe at the the Kemper Contemporary Museum in Kansas City…." Interview.
December 5th, 2009 at 8:59 PM
i can't believe i am just hearing of this man. my life is more complete now. and i wish there were an emoticon to indicate "no irony is attached to this statement".
December 6th, 2009 at 2:13 PM
Like a yokel, I am learning something surprising and incapable of irony?
:-F
October 4th, 2010 at 9:06 AM
[...] Touch. As pie-painter Wayne Thiebaud explains to the Times, "you feel the brush, the plumb line of your body, the [...]