These Paintings of Cake are High Art, Okay?
It’s funny the moment you realize you’ve been searching for happiness and all along you knew where to find it: in a slice of cake. Or that’s how Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings of desserts make us feel. The 95 year-old artist finds inspiration in doughnut cases and bakery windows, and like a chef with the freshest ingredients, he just wants his creations to make people smile. We think he succeeds in these utterly delightful paintings of cupcakes, sandwiches, lollipops, and lemon meringue pies, which are some of the works going up for auction at Christie’s September 29. They'll also be on view at Christie’s Rockefeller Plaza galleries through the 29th, free and open to the public.
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 20161/9Boston Cremes
When Thiebaud began painting food he thought, "'That certainly has to be the end of me as a serious painter—a slice of pie.’ But I couldn’t leave it alone...It just seemed to be the most genuine thing which I had done.”
From "Seven Still Lifes and a Silver Landscape" (1970). Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 20162/9Big Suckers
"I have only rarely painted steaks, but I have painted soup, hors d’oeuvres, chickens and once I painted bread, but it turned out to be a failure."
This painting is from Thiebaud's "Seven Still Lifes and a Rabbit" series (1971). It can be all yours for an estimated $50,000 - $70,000.
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 20163/9Sandwich (1968)
Thiebaud, who once worked in restaurants, said that environment was "always poetic to me.”
Estimate: $15,000 - 20,000
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 20164/9Lemon Meringue Pie Slices (1990)
"You can’t tell what food tastes like by looking at it, any more than you can tell what people are like merely by looking at them. There is a place I go to in Sacramento where all the pies look standard, but the chocolate and lemon meringue pies taste terrific, the crusts are flaky and the fillings are rich with fresh lemon flavor.”
Est. $100,000 - $150,000
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 20165/9Cupcakes and Doughnuts (2006)
"My subject matter was a genuine sort of experience that came out of my life, particularly the American world in which I was privileged to be [in]."
Estimate: $7,000 - 10,000
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 20166/9Candy Apples (1987)
"There are a lot of foods I haven’t painted, such as pizza or spaghetti. I have no interest in painting them. It is mostly the food every American child has been brought up on. "
Estimate: $35,000 - $45,00
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 20167/9Untitled (Cupcake) (circa 2001)
"[In America, desserts] are full of globs of material such as chocolate or cream. The materials are used as a kind of metaphor of plentitude. Americans always put on much more frosting, etc., than is needed."
Estimate: $200,000 - 300,000
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 20168/9Four Cakes
'...cakes, they are glorious, they are like toys."
From the series "Recent Etchings II" (1979)
CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 20169/9Breakfast (1995)
"Commonplace objects are constantly changing...The pies, for example, we now see, are not going to be around forever. We are merely used to the idea that things do not change."
Estimate: $5,000 - 7,000
