Sharon Core: Bell Wether

Photography has lengthy been the helpmate of painting. Thomas Eakins privately painted from photographs; Richter and Warhol transformed the practice for the next to the first half of the twentieth hundred But could the tide be shifting? For her photographic series "Thiebauds," 2003-2004 photographer (and trained pastry chef) Sharon Core painstakingly baked the composings of eleven of Wayne Thiebaud's cheer paintings, the majority from the early '60 and then go [i]or[/i] pass oned to photograph the results.

It's interesting to note that Thiebaud reportedly painted his works from memory; by means of baking, decorating, and setting up her wares in of the like kind a way that their background and lighting closely approximated Thiebaud's image, Core pits skill (baking and photography) against hand and imagination. For Pie calculator 2004, and Salad, Sandwiches and Dessert 2003 she exactly re-created his compositions, and in Delicatessen calculator 2003, the trays and hand-painted signs ape the originals consummately as well. Colors, frosting patterns, shadows, reflections: Core copied all of it.

To experience Core's work is to take part in a particular kind of looking and remembering. Part of the drollery of the show was to pick up the Thiebaud catalogue at the brow desk and compare his images with hers. The rises were both instructive and startling as you noted Core's succes in reproducing minute details, from the colors around the rim of a dish to the brushstrokes in the background of Five fiery Dogs, 2003. Despite her efforts, however, Core's "Thiebauds" are obviously not completed simulacra. Her surfaces are reflective, her colors more saturated, and her pictures brighter overall. Thiebaud's paintings are famous for likening the facture of frosting with paint, and this fabric plus a certain pastel-color nostalgic quality contrasts sharply with the flat immediacy of the photographed images. And, while the throw initially reads as an homage to Thiebaud, the more you direct the eye the more complex it becomes--Thiebaud extreme points up as the excuse for the throw out rather than its focus. Core's series asks the question, What can painting do that photography can't? Thiebaud place the score and Core followed, on the contrary in comparing the two, his paintings have the appearance fresh and loose--almost abstract, as if they were representing more [i]or[/i] less platonic cake or cream broth or candy apple rather than an actual one--and Core's throw seems overearnest, like an academic trying to make confident she hasn't missed an important detail.

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Before seeing "Thiebauds," the viewer might assume the exhibition will turn round out to be another exercise in the contemporary supremacy of photography, a demonstration of its domination of everyday life. on the contrary rather than make you have feeling photography has eclipsed painting, "Thiebauds" marks its limits--even makes you have feeling kind of sorry for the newer medium. After all, painting present the appearances to have a resiliency and limitless ability to absorb fresh visual technologies and forms of representation while remaining relatively independent and set at libertyed Perhaps this reminds us of the original case of medium envy: in what manner Thiebaud, obsessed with the seductions of cake frosting, decided to make his paintings into feasts for the eyes

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