Iconic Women --- Day 4/223

Walk: Not Much - H-o-t
Distance: Not far, small yoga just to get the kinks out



Wayne Thiebaud, Two Kneeling Figures, 1966, oil on canvas

It's still suddenly summer out here this Fall.  Bathing suit weather, (but who wears those these days?). Here is Wayne Thiebaud's wife and constant model, Betty, painted in two suits.

Is she hot or cold, happy or sad, available or guarded, inside or outside?  Without losing her identity, Thiebaud  has transformed her into an icon, stylized, enigmatic.  Perhaps carrying the weight of hisory on her strong, bare shoulders.  In many ways these could be Greek marble statues of women.


Peplos Kore, dedicated to the goddess Athena on the Akropolis in Athens c.530 BCE

But then before the Greeks were the Egyptians  and the Babylonians
 and those ancient stone age carvings 
Willendorf Venus

Venus of Parzadzik

And what about the East and Russia and Persia? Has Thiebaud's female image taken us back to the beginning of civilization and traced its artistic expression? Silence encapsulates the answer:  Like most artists, Wayne Thiebaud is not in the explaining business.