Cake Loves You Madly: Wayne Thiebaud

Though it’s been seven years since the last Cake studio LP, you can understand why it took the eclectic Sacramento, Calif., rockers so long to finish album number six. Like its predecessors, Showroom Of Compassion was self-produced, but for the new LP, the band members engineered it themselves in their solar-powered studio and released it on their self-run Upbeat label. And aside from gigging relentlessly, the group also organized the multi-genre Unlimited Sunshine Tours (which have featured bands as diverse as the Flaming Lips, De La Soul and Cheap Trick) and is currently in the planning stages for a 2011 UST. Cake—vocalist/pianist John McCrea, multi-instrumentalists Vincent DiFiore, Xan McCurdy and Gabriel Nelson and drummer Paulo Baldi—is taking to the road this week in support of Showroom Of Compassion, playing multiple nights in numerous cities. The band will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with DiFiore.

Gabriel Nelson: Sacramento’s historic Crocker Art Museum has recently expanded with an all new wing. To commence the new era of the fusion of Victorian and modern architecture, they chose to exhibit the works of local genius Wayne Thiebaud. Theibaud is now in his 90th year on earth, so the show covers a fairly incredible span of time and artistic phases. What he became known for early on was his ability to paint desserts. This probably sounds a bit humorous; however, he did it undeniably well. He made the paint look so frosting-like that any viewer would be stricken with the desire to go eat something sweet. But Thiebaud didn’t stop at being the Pavlov of paint. He moved into doing portraits of people. Among these portraits we see his wife, his son and himself. Also people sitting in chairs at a party. And there’s something profound in their faces. Again we see his signature brush stroke, which is typically long and straight, often stretching horizontally all the way across the canvas. Looking closer, it is surprising to see a line of primary red in a brown shoe or a brilliant blue in what you thought was a drab grey suit jacket. And you will notice a unique highlighting style, using bright yellow to provide a halo around a figure, done so subtly that all you sense is that the figure seems to pop to life. Majorettes exemplifies this quite well. Later on come the land and cityscapes. This change in topic was accompanied by a darker pallet. But the hidden streaks of brilliant primary color and the brush strokes remain. Thiebaud now begins to introduce multiple perspectives. We can see a field with crop rows as though we are standing there on that colored and textured soil, but off in the distance is another scene that we view from above. The impossible becomes completely plausible in Thiebaud’s created reality and all the more enjoyable that way.

Video after the jump.