Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021)
1961
Oil on canvas
This painting of a domestic breakfast table is unusual in Wayne Thiebaud’s work, which typically focuses on the public and commercial spaces of American life. A bowl of cold cereal – so named in distinction from warm breakfast grains – sits in the shadow of its box. The word ‘FREE’ emblazoned on the back references the giveaways that had become a mainstay of cereal promotion by this time. However, by eliminating all other text, Thiebaud perhaps gestures beyond this to broader notions of capitalist America as a torchbearer of freedom – an ideal that held a particularly strong charge during the Cold War period.