Boiled down there are really only two types of museum exhibits focusing on a solo artist. There is the all out encyclopedic thorough examination of their life’s work. If your institution cannot go all out and organize such a show there is still a chance for curatorial glory. You, the nerdy curator (and these days American institutional curators are twerps of the lowliest order) can come up with a theme about any artist in particular and build a show around that theme as it relates to exhibiting the artworks of said artist that your institution can actually get loaned to it.
It is a pretty simple process: either your museum can in fact get the big important artworks on loan or it cannot. If you can you get to charge upwards to $40 for people to walk through winding galleries in an extensive deep dive of an artist’s work. Usually these things are arranged chronologically but adventurous digressions can be attempted. But you have to come through with the goods.
If you don’t have the distinct iconic masterpieces that define an artist’s life’s work (start to finish) and you don’t have a warren of connected, expansive gallery spaces in which to show it all, you don’t get to sell tickets and have a separate gift shop devoted to the singular theme of this artist’s life. You can do a nerdy theme show in a little corner of your institution with a thin catalog that references your clever theme about an artist and get the estate to cooperate for a few revelatory works that may, one day when there is a proper retrospective of the artist, shine a little art historical credit on you. Nerdy titmouse curator vindicated in the wider grand narrative, hooray, all the slogging at your pathetic institution will have been worth it.
Someone in San Francisco done fucked up the playbook. Of course they would never think to organize a grand retrospective of a deserving recent great and include the exhibit under the general admission banner. Nope. They stiffed folks $35 for a nerdy digression about the great painter Wayne Thiebaud, crammed too many people in their Legion of Honor basement galleries, even had docent tours smother room after room with attentive gawkers, put an obtrusive placard of seventh-grade-reading-level text next to every painting to drive home their little theme about the artist, insultingly included small reproductions of art historical paintings next to these dumb placards to assert that every Thiebaud painting in the show was based in some other artwork out there from art history. Of course Wayne Thiebaud was never influenced by an unknown artwork or just a popsicle stick on the sidewalk, no, his painting was all based on art historically significant paintings.
One could of course drive home that singular counterpoint of the man’s originality if one could have pointed to Thiebaud’s most iconic works; his depiction of rows of pies, cakes, donuts, you know them, art history knows them, everyone knows them. But this bullshit exhibit didn’t have the curatorial or institutional mojo to get a loan of a single painting featuring rows of pies. When I spent thirty-five fucking dollars for a digital Wayne Thiebaud ticket it was to see rows of pies. Rows of cakes. Rows of donuts. I expected to see rows of paintings of rows of pies, rows of paintings of rows of cakes, rows of paintings of rows of donuts.
There were none.
I get that curators are gonna curate but curate on your own damn dime. This exhibit was a homely researcher’s wet dream: everything in the artist’s oeuvre was based on the average curator’s field of study. Just like the new Pope won because he had ran the office that interviewed prospective Cardinals, you can see this curator here curating a show to impress other curators to win Curator of the Year. And you know at the curator of the year ceremony there’s gonna be rows of pies set out for everyone to pig out on as they talk about obscure artist trivia that may be interesting, may even be entertaining, but isn’t worth thirty-five goddamned dollars.
None of this is to diminish the genius and accomplishments of Wayne Thiebaud. This exhibit is great painting after great painting, each constructed of paintbrush facture magically transforming the thickest impasto into a minimal gesture. The paintings all ooze with life while paradoxically revering a synthetic slickness. There is not a fault in any artwork here, but the brutish, self-righteous curation sinks what could have been a blockbuster on the artist’s Northern California home court.
The wall text is omnipresent, a manifestation of curatorial narcissism squealing “Look at me, look at me!”, the galleries cannot accommodate large crowds and the crowds for the show are impressive. The cherrypicking ignores many series the artist produced (besides the cafeteria sweetness treats there are none of his centenarian Clown paintings). This intentional oversight is because of the narrow theme of the show – that Thiebaud is a plagiarist, gosh thanks for doing the guy’s legacy a favor. Precious gallery space is devoted to Thiebaud’s personal art collection. For a show entitled “Art Comes From Art” this exhibit obsessed about the artist’s personal storage locker more than the art. There are a few too many paintings whose subject is the artist’s wife and the irony is that nearby Sacramento’s Crocker Museum has a much better 1965 painting of her along with some of his iconic confectionary works. We visited the Crocker a few days before we made it to Frisco and the great Thiebauds they have on display got me excited for the show at the Legion of Honor but Sacramento’s holdings were better than just about anything on display in the Legion’s palace near the Bay.
There is a desperation among Thiebaud’s scholars to untether his legacy from Pop Art. Since no artist can supersede Warhol’s legacy, better to build a market as the biggest fish in a smaller pond, right? This is probably a wise move and there are probably a hundred ways to contextualize his greatness outside of Pop. After seeing firsthand how reductive the work truly is, on a structural level, could an association with the Minimalists not be impossible? His late-career flirtations with landscape insist he be paired with Diebenkorn at some point. There are more than a few lineages onto which his legacy could be grafted but dumb shows like “Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes From Art” is not the way to do it.
Despite my abhorrence at this awful curation I bought the $35 teeshirt of the Thiebaud painting of three gumball machines in the exhibition-exclusive gift shop next to the show because a great painter remains great despite the company of the drips appointed as curators.
The show runs thru August 17 at the Legion of Honor in Frisco, an institution which has one claim to excellence: free parking.
