Later in his career, Thiebaud began experimenting with playful versions of traditional genres. In his 2008 River Lake, above, Thiebaud explores perspective, or point of view, in a landscape. Leading lines at the bottom of the composition pull the viewer’s eye into the distance where trees stand upright. Thiebaud does not include a horizon line—the horizontal line where the earth meets the sky—so the water and sky blend together. At the same time, the parallel lines in the dark brown field in the middle ground seem to lift upward, as if seen from above. These two conflicting perspectives appear within the same image, confusing the space.
Thiebaud describes his landscape paintings like this one saying, “People see them a little too quickly as aerial views, but they’re different in the sense that there are many different viewpoints simultaneously.”
How does Thiebaud play with space, texture, light, and perspective in each of the paintings shown here? How do his compositional choices transform traditional genre paintings into contemporary compositions?