Described by one critic as America’s “laureate of lunch counters”, artist Wayne Thiebaud produced luscious paintings of pies, cakes, hot dogs, and displays of consumable goods that have often drawn comparisons with historical still life painters or mid-century Pop Artists. On the occasion of the Courtauld Gallery’s The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life, this panel will look afresh at Thiebaud’s work, putting it into dialogue with that of other American artists who were interested in vernacular things and places and with the matter and materiality of paint, including Vija Celmins, Paul McCarthy, Claes Oldenburg, and Tschabalala Self.
Via short presentations and discussion, the panel will reflect on Thiebaud’s work in relation to viscosity, softness and disgust; abstraction and affect; electricity and refrigeration; and the class and racial politics of the lunch counter.
The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life is on view at the Courtauld Gallery until the 18 January 2026.
Organised by Dr Lucy Bradnock, Reader in Modern and Contemporary Art and Dean for Research, in collaboration with The Courtauld Centre for the Art of the Americas, directed by Professor Jo Applin.
Speakers:
Dr Lucy Bradnock is Dean for Research at the Courtauld and an art historian of modern and contemporary art in the United States, with an interest in ecological and infrastructural art histories. She is author of No More Masterpieces: Modern Art After Artaud, and co-editor and co-author of Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles Art, 1945-1980 (Getty, 2011) and Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator (Getty, 2015).
Dr Harriet Curtis is senior lecturer in Drama at De Montfort University. Her research engages with the history, politics, and aesthetics of contemporary art, performance, and visual culture, focusing particularly on queer, feminist, and activist art practices. Her book Mess and Contemporary Performance: Complexity, Containment, and Collapse (Routledge 2024) theorises mess and messiness in live art, theatre, visual art, and film.
Dr Ferren Gipson is an art historian, artist and cultural storyteller. She works at the intersection of art history, storytelling, and creative expression to explore how visual and material culture is shaped by our inner lives and shared histories. Her work engages with themes of modernity, materiality, craft, iconography, and identity, with a particular interest in overlooked and under-loved subjects.
Dr Barnaby Wright is Deputy Head of the Courtauld Gallery and the Daniel Katz Curator of 20th-century art. He is co-curator, with Dr Karen Serres, of Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life. Barnaby has curated a number of recent exhibitions of modern and contemporary art at the Courtauld and has a particular interest post-war painting in Britian and the United States.
