Cotton Candy

Cotton Candy, executed in 2016, is an exquisite, late example of Wayne Thiebaud’s enduring aesthetic conviction, whose career has not only been notable for its length but also its perseverance and quality. Created on an intimate scale, this painting epitomizes Thiebaud’s unique figurative idiom that balances representation and abstraction, seriousness and wit, and immediacy of touch and rigorous compositional control. Known for his luminously unpredictable colors, Thiebaud addresses the verisimilitude of commonplace Americana and examines reality through an artistic lens. Using his soft palette and spontaneous, yet calculated brushstrokes, Thiebaud set up the cotton candy cone as if it was sitting on a candy store window. Thiebaud defamiliarizes his subject matter’s banality and, as David Anfam states: “The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects unfamiliar, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important” (D. Anfam, Wayne Thiebaud 1962 to 2017, White Cube, London, 2017, p. 7).
Thiebaud’s simplification of objects through his exquisite brushwork are beautifully executed in Cotton Candy. The expansive fluff rests on top of the cone’s triangle, perfectly centered upon a rectangular tray. A textured richness of paint creates delicate, varied effects on the candy cone. With his signature paint handling, Thiebaud sculpts the cone into existence, with a rich smooth dragging of the paint across the background contours. Employing a technique Thiebaud calls “object transference,” the artist stylishly takes advantage of the luscious texture of the oil paint and transforms it into the substance it depicts—the airy, frothy frosting of cotton candy. His exquisite brushwork is powerfully exhibited in the light sugary ball of cotton, which emerges in solid volume from the dense surface. Also present in Cotton Candy is Thiebaud’s masterful juxtaposition of warm and cool tones to outline the shapes and edges of the subject. The cone and tray’s edges are canary yellow, orange and a light blue, almost creating a halo around the objects. This “halation,” as Thiebaud dubbed it, creates a vibration of contour. The soft palette of the complementary colors of yellow and purple, splashing interactively over the cotton ball as well as the supporting cone, proves the artist’s thorough understanding of the contrast of hues.
Cotton Candy belongs to a series of single confectionary paintings, in which Thiebaud illustrates a masterful sense of spatial dislocation. While working as an apprentice animator at Walt Disney Studios, Thiebaud learned a cartoon draughtsmanship style. The lessons of reduced stereotypical essence of a form carried over to his paintings of commonplace food items that are clearly laid out against blank backgrounds with a strong lighting effect. In what he called, the “isolation of the object,” Thiebaud explained “The space inference that I want is one of isolation, Ultra clear, bright, air-conditioned atmosphere that might be sort of stirred up around the objects and echo their presence is what I aim for. For this reason, uninterrupted single-colored backgrounds are used, and this allows the brush marks to be seen more clearly and play their role.” (W. Thiebaud, R. Teagle, Wayne Thiebaud 1958-1968, Oakland, 2018, p. 23). While the cotton candy and cone are delicately pushed up against the creamy picture plane, the aerial shadows recede into space.
When an entire generation embraced the painterly lexicon of Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s, Thiebaud proposed a radical journey on painting, distinctive for its rich figuration, visual experience and exhilarating use of paint. Although Thiebaud was always reluctant to embrace Pop art, his fascination with brash Americana tells the story of popular culture through paintings of cafeteria items. Rather than the grand Hollywood billboards, Thiebaud focused on the small scale and intimate parts of everyday life. However, he rendered these modern subjects in a painterly style that relied heavily on tradition; paying homage to a range of modern masters including Edward Hopper, Piet Mondrian, Willem de Kooning, and Richard Diebenkorn. He once noted, “I’m very influenced by the tradition of painting and not at all self-conscious about identifying my sources” (W. Thiebaud, quoted in S. Nash, Wayne Thiebaud: A Retrospective, New York, 2000, p. 11). Performing a constant balance between visual simplicity and color alchemy, Cotton Candy represents the paradoxical and compelling character of his art.