Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021)
1963
Oil on canvas
Wayne Thiebaud was fascinated by the colours and decorative patterns that recurred across a range of modern consumer products. In this depiction of children’s yo-yos, he relishes painting their bright swirls and stars. It could easily be mistaken for one of Thiebaud’s paintings of cakes or candies. Where others might have seen banal uniformity in such cheap, mass-produced objects, Thiebaud explored the beauty of their small differences. Here, his attentive and thickly applied brushwork introduces idiosyncrasies in each object, creating a strange transposition of the factory-produced yo-yos remade by the artist’s hand.