How Wayne Thiebaud used cake to express both absence and abundance
The Courtauld Gallery stages the first UK exhibition of the great champion of the American diner.
Wayne Thiebaud, Three Machines , 1963, Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 92.7cm, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco © Wayne Thiebaud/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image: Photograph by Randy Dodson, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Posters and photographs of Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings simply don’t do them justice. In real life, they’re shiny, textured and very painterly – just as seductive as the subjects they depict. Cakes, sweets, cheeses, ice cream cones, and gum dispensers – they all become main characters in his grand canvases.
Wayne Thiebaud’s career took several turns before arriving, in the early 1960s, at his most feted cake era. Prior to that, he had a stint at Disney, worked as an illustrator, a sign painter and an art professor. He also tried his hand at (almost-) Abstract Expressionism, so prevalent at the time.
It was on the advice of friends – the De Kooning family – that he put effort into finding his own voice.
Wayne Thiebaud in his studio in Sacramento with his painting Pies in the background, 1961. Photographer: Betty Jean Thiebaud. Collection of the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation. © Wayne Thiebaud/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025
His knowledge of art history and the desire to paint what he knew nudged him in the direction of a new kind of still life. Simplifying form and colour, isolating objects, clarifying the area of interest – this was innovative at the time, and the style is now seen as unmistakably his.
Rows of pies were something he remembered from his days working in restaurants. They were, as curator Karen Serres points out, triangular shapes perched on circular plates – Thiebaud was directly following Cezanne’s advice to always start from the basic building blocks: simple shapes.
Wayne, who always worked from memory and imagination, found himself painting a new pie every day, and each pie was different from the previous ones. His brain became a veritable pie machine, producing a certain vision of the United States that critics at the time (and even now) find hard to place.
Wayne Thiebaud, Pie Rows , 1961, Oil on canvas, 46 x 66cm, Collection of the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation. © Wayne Thiebaud/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image: Wayne Thiebaud Foundation
Rows of sweets are associated with abundance and pleasure, but the way Wayne painted them, they also speak of melancholy and absence. There’s a notable lack of human presence in this period of his painting, too, but also a lack of the products – the shelves and trays are often half or entirely empty.
With these new paintings (and following many rejections), Thiebaud finally found a dealer in New York in 1961. The following year, he had a sell-out show at the Allan Stone Gallery and suddenly became a ‘hotcake’ on the American art scene.
A visual and thematic similarity to Pop Art served him well. He participated in group exhibitions with Warhol and others. Their aims, though, seem to have been quite different. While both zoomed in on consumerism and the excesses of post-War US, their attitudes to them were diametrically opposed. While Pop Artists approached the subject with cynicism and critique, Wayne believed that it deserved attention and that every era produces its own still life. He believed he had found that of his era.
Installation view of Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life at The Courtauld Gallery. Photo © Fergus Carmichael
The exhibition at the Courtauld is not large. Set across two rooms, it presents 21 paintings and a few drawings. However, several of the paintings are done on an epic scale, which intensifies their impact on the viewer.
The most famous work in the show, simply called Cakes, delivers twelve or so life-size, heavily-decorated cakes, each hovering precariously on a thin-legged stand. The lower right-hand rose cake’s decoration is executed with heavy impasto paint that mimics the white piping. This painting produces a range of complex thoughts. While the cakes are clearly festive and celebratory, they don’t feel quite right; in the way they are painted, they don’t seem real, yet some elements make them feel almost tangible.
Thiebaud’s canvases depict the cakes less so than the era that he was painting: post War optimism, mixed with the uneasy dismantling of the American dream. On one hand, a nostalgic look at an all-American cake; on the other, a play on art world expectations.
Wayne Thiebaud, Four Pinball Machines , 1962, Oil on canvas, 172.7 x 182.8cm, Private Collection. © Wayne Thiebaud/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image: Courtesy of Acquavella Galleries
This artist was as well versed in the history of art as in the art movements of his own time. In Four Pinball Machines he humorously references the abstract work of contemporaries such as Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly; in doing so he makes them part of the entertainment.
As usual, the Courtauld capitalises on its permanent collection’s links to the current exhibition. Thiebaud took inspiration from Cezanne and Manet, whose works can be seen in the room just outside the exhibition doors.
Wayne Thiebaud, Delicatessen Counter , 1963, Oil on canvas, 153.7 x 185.4 cm, Private Collection. © Wayne Thiebaud/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image: Julia Featheringill Photo
One painting in particular, Delicatessen Counter (1963), is compared to the Courtauld’s iconic masterpiece, Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882). It is certain Thiebaud visited the Courtauld and would have encountered it in person.
Once you see both works, the parallels become clear: both paintings place the viewer in the position of a customer; both suggest abundance, but also hint at isolation and absence.
Installation view of Wayne Thiebaud. Delights at The Courtauld Gallery. Photo © Fergus Carmichael
Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life is running in conjunction with a second show, Wayne Thiebaud. Delights. Shown in a separate room, it is a group of the artist’s works on paper – different in scale and execution to his grand paintings. Much more delicate, often black and white, they open new ways of reading his overall message.
Wayne Thiebaud, Caged Pie, 1962, Oil on canvas, 51.1 x 71.4 cm, The San Diego Museum of Art, Museum Purchased through the Earle W. Grant Acquisition Fund. 1977.109 © Wayne Thiebaud/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image courtesy the San Diego Museum of Art
The beauty of Thiebaud’s works is in their perceived simplicity, which hides a multitude of possible readings. For me – a middle-aged woman – the melancholy was palpable. For my upbeat teenage daughter, the jolly colours and suggestion of desert brought feelings of delight. To me, empty counters meant absence, to her they suggested a good day of sales for the vendor. The repetition of the pies unnerved me, to her it just seemed like a feast.
I wonder how much of what we get from art depends on what we read at the gallery, rather than what we see. With this exhibition, looking at the works in person is an absolute must.
The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud. American Still Life
The Courtauld Gallery, London
10 October 2025 – 18 January 2026