Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by poet Tabatha Yeatts Here. Be sure to stop by her blog to see what she has for us this week. Yesterday she posted about drawbridges with photos, ancient, interesting, and beautiful. Thank you Tabatha!
I traveled last week to the west coast to see my son and daughter-in-law and we visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
I usually feel overwhelmed in art museums. I want to learn about and remember everything! But that is impossible. So I took some photos to jog my mind later. On my visit, I discovered several artists new to me. One of them is Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021), whose work is often considered pop art, though he wasn’t apparently a fan of Andy Warhol’s repetitive paintings of consumer items.
Wayne Thiebaud is known for his colorful, luscious paintings of cakes, pastries, ice cream and other eye-catchers such as bright lipstick, using repetition and exaggerated shadows. Here’s a Youtube video featuring the artist speaking on his path to becoming an artist. How does did he decide what ideas he will bring to the world? If you have time it’s worth seeing.
Thiebaud paintings feature bright lucious colors that are mouth watering, styled as in an advertisement. Why?
Looking more deeply, his bright objects say something about the essence of consumerism. I saw his 1963 painting, THREE MACHINES, and wondered what might be represented by gumballs? Why gumballs?
What do these mean? I wondered. Next to the painting, the museum posted this description.
"Gumballs are the common-denominator of penny candy--a sort of atom particle of American consumer culture. They also represent, in microcosm, a common cycle of American consumerism, which spans from an imagined ideal, to the pleasure of possession, to a state of diminishing returns--and finally to the sense of loss--until the cycle begins again."
It seems Thiebaud spent his time thinking about more than gumballs. An excellent metaphor, the gumball as an “atomic particle of American consumer culture.” Like candies such as M & M’s, which I love, one just keeps wanting repetitive experience of pleasure. I buy M & M’s whenever I go to a movie, I simply have to, and the empty box is always disappointing.
I wrote a tanka to share:
THIEBAUD'S ATOMIC PARTICLES Gumballs glistening tangy red, blue, green sharp fruity flavor-- desire alternated with an aftertaste of loss. © Janice Scully 2024
That’s one reason we look at art, why I return to art museums–because art touches indirectly what it means to be human. Why do we buy the things and do the things we do? Why do we always want more?
Have a great weekend. The winter is rushing past! Thank you, Tabatha, for hosting.