Delicious: The Art and Life of Wayne Thiebaud Hardcover – December 13, 2007

This book is a must for anyone who is a fan of Wayne Thiebaud's art. The reproductions are many, varied and fabulous and the text is wonderful coverage of the artist and his life and work. It is a great book that is easy to share with children yet is is also a very good adult read. Wonderful book!

It's a small nice book. I'm looking for one that talks more about Wayne's process and how he thinks about color.

I bought this book so I could share it with my students k-7. The students were able to flip through the book and learn about the artist and gather inspiration from the colored pictures and quotations.

This is not a good book. Poor colors, poor reproductions. Childish writing. Absolutely no reason to have this book in your library. A waste of money.

My art students and I love this book. It is simple to read, great pictures and intersting. I cannot wait to read more books by Susan Goldman Rubin.

This is a nicely produced little book with clear text, but if you are looking for some of the famous food paintings by Thiebaud, you won't find them in here.

This books does give good facts, but it seems it was written for someone who has the reading capacity of a first grader. In addition, many of his artworks are not included within the book.

An absolutely "delicious" study of a contemporary painter, how he makes art, and what art does, packaged in a wonderfully designed book that young people (and pretty much anyone else) will enjoy.

As an experienced (OK, old) food chemist I suppose that I should warm to the works of Wayne Thiebaud, born 1920, the hot dogs, burgers ["Hamburge"r, 1961] and ice-covered cakes ["Celebration Cakes", 1992], and I do. I had not realised that this book was aimed at young readers but, as it does not patronise the reader, it can be recommended as a gentle introduction of the artist's work.The author tells the story of the artist's life in a series of chapters, "A great way to grow up", "From cartoons to painting", "Brush dance", "Layers beneath the layer cake", "Posing for Pop", "From farms to `Fantasy City'" and "Lovable Cakes". The text is complemented by 40 coloured reproductions and there are also contemporary photographs of the artist. The book is completed by a Bibliography and an Index. The illustrations go beyond the usual high-calorie cakes and gum dispensers ["Gum Machine", 1964], and so give a good idea of the breadth of Thiebaud's work.The artist was born in Arizona but, by the age of 11, he had lived in California and then in Utah where he helped on his father's farm. The farm was repossessed during the Great Depression so the family moved back to Long Beach, California, where the future artist washed dishes and later worked as a cook in a restaurant. In High School he broke his back and drew cartoons to pass the time. Aged 16, he joined Walt Disney Studios [perhaps remembered in "Toy Mickey", 1988] as an animator, went to a local free art school and learned graphic design.In the war, Thiebaud served as an army artist and afterwards went to New York to find work as a cartoonist and/or a commercial artist, but was unsuccessful, so worked as a designer for a drug company. A friend lent him some art books and he decided to become a fine artist, went to college and, in 1951, obtained a job as an art teacher but painted in his spare time, showing his works in restaurants and stores. In 1956, he took a sabbatical, went to New York and met de Kooning, who encouraged him and offered some tips. He now began to draw cakes ["Cake Slices", 1962; "Four Cupcakes", 1971], pies ["Pies, Pies, Pies", 1961], gum dispensers ["Three Machines", 1963] and pinball machines [mixed media "Pinball Machine", 1956; "Four Pinball Machines", 1962], and in 1961 held his first exhibition, which was unsuccessful. He sent his work to a gallery in New York and, at last, in 1962 he was successful.He chose to remain a Realist rather that join the Pop Artists and took up lithography ["Display Rows", 1990] as well as painting traditional subjects, animals ["Rabbit", 1966; C"at and Building", 1993] and people ["Betty Jean Thiebaud and Book", 1965-69, a portrait of his wife of, now, over 50 years; "Self-portrait with Suspenders", 1987] but now had to learn to work from live models. A feature of Thiebaud's work are his shadows ["Two Majorettes", 1962; "Family Figures", 1990], which are full of colour and take as much time and thought as the main image.In the late 1960s he turned to landscapes, both rural ["Pond", 1996-2000; "Delta", 1998; "The Riverhouse", 2001] and urban ["24th Street Intersection", 1977; "Urban Freeway (Study)", 1979-80; "Dark City", 1999], manipulated perspective, and broadened his palette. In 1990, Thiebaud retired from full-time teaching, the last painting in the book, "Jolly Cones", 2002, sums up his art and his positive outlook on life.The cylindrical cakes and cones of ice cream may reference the still lifes of Chardin or of the 20th-century Italian Giorgio Morandi. When Thiebaud paints an object or form, it will be surrounded with multiple colors, often in stripes or lines, of equal intensity, to create a `halo effect', which the artist explains as the colours "fighting for position".This is a very joyous book, free from the angst-filled canvasses of some modernists. In contrast to Warhol, who is cool and ironic Thibaud is warm and gently comic. Apparently, at the age of 93 he draws or paints nearly every day and plays tennis about three times a week. Long may he continue!

An excellent purchase. The book is exactly what I wanted, brilliant overview of his life and works. Ideal for my art students to use to base thier research on.