Daniel Curiel's Review of "Wayne Thiebaud: Prints in Process" at the CSULB University Art Museum

Wayne Thiebaud Review

Wayne Thiebaud is a painter and printmaker from the Pop Art era who takes objects and ideas from popular culture, along with other known artists like Andy Warhol, and inverts them in his own way.  Though Wayne Thiebaud and other Pop artists like Warhol were contemporaries, their work draws very different visual experiences of often similar inspirations.  While Warhol sought to flatten objects with uniformity and a methodical detachment from his work, Thiebaud uses thick impasto in his paintings as well as different layers in his printing to create a feeling of depth and personal touch.

One piece that illustrates this point is Thiebaud’s Dark Cake from 1983.  Though many have believed otherwise, this work is actually a woodcut printed with water-based inks rather than traditional oil-based.  This gives the cake the appearance of a moist exterior, almost dripping down to the plate.  The cake’s layering of color and use of color to frame the shadows and edges helps create a strong three-dimensionality and a painterly feel.  In contrast, works by Warhol are often screen-printed using flat plains of color layered in flattening way.  Warhol and his followers sought to take away the human element and create a detachment between themselves and their works.   His workshop was even named “The Factory.”

Another work that highlights this difference is in how the two artists dealt with the iconic character of Mickey Mouse in their works.  While Thiebaud painted Mickey Mouse’s head onto one of his signature cakes with a thick impasto, Warhol made prints of Mickey Mouse with a cool detachment.  Thiebaud’s use of the Mickey character is not surprising since he had worked previously with Disney in production, but his painting depicts Mickey in a more personalized way, traditional to the character.  Warhol rendered Mickey in a flatter way, using blacks and greys to create a colder, unfeeling character.  Though he often said his work did not have meaning, the piece can be read as showing the coldness of the fame “industry” and how the character itself does not hold any physical substance, it is only an image on the surface of the canvas.   

This exhibition will continue at the University Art Museum until 5/29/16

Exhibition at the UAM on the CSULB campus - A review of "Traditions Transfigured: The Noh Masks of Bidou Yamaguchi" by Helen Cox

The author of this post

Thoughts on Traditions Transfigured:  The Noh Masks of Bidou Yamaguchi

Review by Helen Cox, January 28, 2014

 I knew nothing of Noh Masks when I went to the gallery, so I read the signs.  I was struck by the goal of the masks:  “incremental innovation within tradition.”  By allowing innovation, there is room for creation and evolving art forms, instead of the emptiness and stagnation in repetition.

 The craftsmanship in the masks is superb.  Innovations are left for the creative aspects; there are strict rules for the craft.  Apparently the use of sandpaper is considered cheating, so the artists who carve these very smooth masks have to be highly skilled and patient.  Their skills extend to painting.  Each strand of hair must be painted with one brush stroke so the thickness of the hair does not change, as it would if the brush were lifted and then replaced.  I can imagine the hours of practice required!  After all that careful work, the masks are then stressed with a brush and a secret formula, to make them look old.

First on display is Yamaguchi’s skill in the traditional art form. Then, the artist became interested in transforming two-dimensional Japanese images into three-dimensional masks. Not only did he apply the Noh mask craft to something new, but he demonstrated innovation within the construction of the mask, employing a modern interpretation to facial features. For example, the nose on the Sharaku print mask is bent to the side, as it was drawn in the three-quarter view of the print. The mouths of the women end half-way across the face. This distortion is meaningful, not random. When viewed from a particular perspective, the mask looks identical to the print or painting.

This woodcut Actor Print is on display with masks, Sharaku, Japan, Oban size, circa 1794

In his third stage, Yamaguchi transformed female icons from European art into Noh masks.  He hit all the big ones:   DaVinci, Vermeer, Velasquez, Münch, Botticelli, etc.  His recreation of the Mona Lisa was spectacular.  I enjoyed the mask more than I enjoyed the original painting (seen ten feet away, through glass and surrounded by idiots with their phone cameras who did not even look at the painting).   He brought back the element in the Mona Lisa that got art historians so excited about the image, before it became a cliché of itself.

 When he created the European art, he even matched the brush strokes to those in the paintings, and of course he aged them in proper Noh tradition.  Some of his innovations were not as successful.  He missed the delicate sensuality of the lips in the Vermeer portrait and made them too red and sloppy, as though her lipstick smeared.  Her tongue is grotesque.  Maria Teresa (Velasquez) had a more bulbous nose and her lips were not quite so turned up; in the mask, she was given a “nose job” which took away some of her personality.  Overall, however, the masks were fantastic, alive, and beautiful.  It was a wonderful way to re-experience images that have become overly familiar.

Note from RS - This notable exhibition will be on display at the UAM until April 13th & was curated under the guidance of Professor Kendall Brown (Interim Director of the Museum Studies Program) by Art History graduate students Karenina Karyodi, Lauren Nochalla, Kristy Odett & Ariana Rizo. A published catalogue accompanies the exhibition & is on sale at the University Art Museum. 

Linda Day: "Swimming in Paint" and Patrick Wilson: "Pull"

Above - Linda Day's studio space.

These two tandem exhibitions at the UAM beautifully complement each other, in terms of abstraction and color certainly, but also in terms of materiality & perception. If I were to make a musical analogy, Wilson's cool and structural offerings would be akin to David Hykes' harmonic investigations, especially in terms of layering form and structure. Linda's presence is so strongly in her work, as Chris Miles observed, "...in the bit-streams, blobs, piles and upwellings; and in the stray words that turn up in her last works - I realize that as Day transubstantiated being into painting, she always had a goal of freshly addressing something with which she grappled." 

There are a number of works on paper or Duralar - in Linda's work, mainly in terms of gouache and pencil, whereas Patrick Wilson used screen-printing in a group titled: Suite for Mt. Washington, from 2007. When we (printmakers) physically make a print, especially a screen-print, we call it "pulling" an edition, and I couldn't help but wonder if that term influenced the description of his painterly investigations.

It was wonderful seeing so many of Linda's former students, colleagues and friends at the opening. A big shout-out to curator Kristina Newhouse for yeoman's duty in writing, organizing, & researching for both offerings. These shows run until 12/9. The University Art Museum is closed on Mondays, hours, parking and directions can be had by calling them directly at: 562/985-5761.