The Great Highway After Seeing Wayne Thiebaud

To me, an art exhibit is successful if you see the paintings appear at random once you’ve left the museum. The Wayne Thiebaud show at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco passed with flying colors, as you can see from this aerial vantage point in Sutro Park.

The premise of the show, Art Comes From Art, is that the artist borrows from/steals from/is inspired by others. The inspirations were hung next to his interpretations, but sometimes the examples felt pretty forced. Thiebaud believed that art is a continuum of ideas, rather than a progression through history, and there were many references to this melting pot of technique, style and problem solving. 

Bouquets to Art is the 41st annual display of floral arrangements at the San Francisco Museums, including the Legion. The artists riff on various paintings in the galleries to create their pieces, as seen in Extras, where the color or theme of the original is echoed in the choice and placement of the flowers. This whole concept is reminiscent of Thiebaud’s ideas that all art comes from other art.

The last Extra may be my favorite: a picture, taken by me, of someone taking a picture of a well-known Thiebaud painting, with the description on the right showing the work that was its inspiration. (I thought I would be able to read the tag with the name of the artist, but it’s too fuzzy, so I can’t give you the details here. I just remember it was a woman.) So, if you consider my photo art, then I am part of the continuum including the unidentified female painter and Wayne Thiebaud himself. Good company.