
“Each era produces its own still lifes…My interest in painting is traditional and modest in its aim. I hope that it may allow us to see ourselves looking at ourselves.”
A luminous example of Wayne Thiebaud’s iconic paintings of confectionaries, Suckers is exemplary of Wayne Thiebaud’s career-long exploration of seriality and his now-iconic singular still-life renderings of mid century American pop culture. Executed from 1989-90, the present work is an expression of the artist’s lifelong deft mastery of color. Resplendent in its saturated hues and rich impasto, Suckers embodies Thiebaud’s reinvention of the traditional still-life genre to reflect his signature exploration into food as a metaphor for American prosperity, consumerism and cultural identity. As one of Thiebaud’s most beloved subjects, the three candies of Suckers are quintessentially demonstrative of Thiebaud’s celebrated practice, which elevates images of American nostalgia, ultimately transforming the quotidian into the iconic through sumptuous imagery and color that evoke both sentiment and memory.

“Most of the objects are fragments of actual experience. For instance, I would really think of the bakery counter, of the way the counter was lit, where the pies were placed, but I wanted just a piece of the experience…Those little vedute in fragmented circumstances were always poetic to me.”
The three prismatic, exuberantly rendered candies of Suckers lie in contrast to their crystalline, delicately articulated sticks, all together testifying to the subtle ministrations of Thiebaud’s painterly hand. Kaleidoscopic and jewel-like, the titular sweets are replete with subtle, gestural indications of materiality and the consequential interaction with light, which further serves to emphasize their tantalizing tactility. Set upon a stark white background, Thiebaud’s brushwork creates rich textural detail that dances about his subject matter. Meanwhile, the artist’s signature blue shadows anchor the rounded forms in space. Thiebaud injects a playfulness into his work through the varying designs of his three sweets: in the center, ribbons of polychromatic pigment swirl together, inviting the eye in, while Thiebaud leans into the graphic aesthetic of his contemporaries to the right and left. Alluring and dreamlike, the three glimmering orbs of Suckers evince the beauty found in the everyday, elevating a mass-produced product to a seductive tableau of American life. Working in tandem, the contrast between his endearingly decadent forms and his tautly constructed composition evokes a gem-like fragment of childhood nostalgia, vivid and frozen yet shimmering at the edges.


While often linked to Pop Artists due to their shared handling of mass-produced objects, Thiebaud’s iterations of classically American consumer goods are fond explorations in repetition and variation rather than a detached critique on standardization. In doing so, he imbues the commonplace with the heroic. Thiebaud himself commented on his affection for the uniformity of American foodstuffs, saying “It interests me because of the consciousness of simultaneity – of how much alike we are, how close we are to one another and how rare it is to come across distinctions of any sort… it’s familiar and also funny; it tells us how gregarious and how close we really are. That’s very comforting.” (Wayne Thiebaud quoted in: Exh. Cat., Pasadena Art Museum, Wayne Thiebaud, 1968, p. 26)
"I looked at all the other things that I thought had been overlooked,” said the artist, “like rows of beautiful round suckers or candied apples or gum ball machines or all of the things which we use in displays in windows on tops of counters.”
In Suckers, Thiebaud reinvigorates the traditional still-life genre to reflect the age of mass production and consumption, retaining a nuanced dialogue with art history while deftly capturing the spirited exuberance and prosperity of 1960s America. “Each era produces its own still lifes”, said the artist, “My interest in painting is traditional and modest in its aim. I hope that it may allow us to see ourselves looking at ourselves.” (Wayne Thiebaud quoted in: Rachel Teagle ed., Wayne Thiebaud: 1958-1968, 2018, p.149) With this goal, Thiebaud paints items taken from window displays and store counters, mass-produced items from manufacturing concerns in America. “I looked at all the other things that I thought had been overlooked,” said the artist, “like rows of beautiful round suckers or candied apples or gum ball machines or all of the things which we use in displays in windows on tops of counters.” (Wayne Thiebaud quoted in: Sarah Cascone, “‘Enjoy It When You Have It, But Don’t Have too Much’: Artist Wayne Thiebaud on How to Savor Cake While Staying Healthy at 100 Years Old” Artnet, 13 November 2020)

Suckers epitomizes Wayne Thiebaud’s career-long adoration for and exploration of confectionery items, deftly and tenderly capturing the zeitgeist of post-war America. Suckers captures and refines Thiebaud’s trademark sumptuous celebration of the American psyche, as his richly impastoed surface and vivid periwinkle shadows bring the lollypops to life. The result is a joyful yet rigorous composition of lyrical magic. Recently honored with a landmark retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Thiebaud remains a titan of postwar Americana, whose work’s nostalgia, enduring cultural resonance, and irresistible charm remain archetypal.