California artist Wayne Thiebaud has eluded categorization throughout his nearly 60-year career, which he came to comparatively late in life. Lumped together with Pop Art stars in the 1960s because of his subject matter—ordinary objects like lavishly frosted cakes, and hot dogs—his ceaseless inquiry into what is art reveals a deeply philosophical base grounded by keenly observed still lives, landscapes, and portraits.  

Nine Jelly Apples, 1964, watercolor and graphite. 

The first museum retrospective of his drawings, which opened this week at the Morgan Library & Museum, reveals the seriousness of that inquiry, often disguised by the fun he’s had while moving charcoal, pastel, ink and pencil across paper.

At age 97, this essentially California artist, who started out as a commercial draftsman, has worked just about every art job available to him, including sign painter, theatrical production designer, art director, poster designer, fashion illustrator, comic strip artist, cartoonist and, briefly as an “inbetweener” at Walt Disney Studios where he inked in the intermediate figures of characters such as Dopey, Pluto and Jiminy Cricket.

Self Portrait, ca. 1970, graphite. 

Thiebaud has lived his entire adult life in the Golden State, save for the year when he moved to New York City, in 1956-57. There he saw the epicenter of Modern art at work as he brushed elbows with Ab-Ex notables Willem deKooning and Franz Kline at the Cedar Tavern. He returned to his teaching job in Sacramento and began to exalt in the visual celebration of products of middle-America, with a unique take on breaking the picture plane in works he calls “fragments of actual experience.” In 1964, his first New York gallery show at Allan Stone Projects put him on the map, with painted close-ups of pastel cakes and diner food.

While Thiebaud readily admits to being addicted to the process of painting, like Van Gogh he believes that drawing is at the root of everything. “Painting and drawing really are ways of learning to look carefully and...in a long, expanded way,” Mr. Thiebaud says, with many sketches serving as exercises in observation. “You’re not making it for anyone to look at,” he says. “You’re really involved in a kind of research on your own.” 

The Morgan show is arranged chronologically, offering a linear view of the artist’s development from early sketches of storefronts and a transcription of a drawing by Daumier to large finished drawings based on the vertiginous streets of San Francisco. In these later landscapes, Thiebaud demonstrates the finesse with which he disrupts reality, making chaos an artistic device in service of his vision. Starting with quick sketches made from observation or memory, he then rearranged elements from these sketches into larger, more elaborate compositions, “erasing, smudging, and fussing around with form.” Adopting a similar method to depict the landscape of the Sacramento River valley, Thiebaud relied increasingly on his imagination to combine the flowing line of the meandering river and the repetitive patterns of the tilled fields into compositions that evoke vast jigsaw puzzles. 

Wayne Thiebaud, Draftsman, continues through September 23 at The Morgan Library & Museum. 225 Madison Avenue at 25^thStreet, NY, NY Info A variety of public programs, including curator tours and sketching in the gallery begin next week. Info

A fully illustrated catalogue, with illuminating texts, including an extensive interview with the artist, Wayne Thiebaud: Draftsman is the first major publication devoted to his lifelong engagement with drawing. Info

All images © Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY; courtesy The Morgan Library and Museum 4LSphoto