Sharon Core’s “Thiebaud” series (2003–04)

Posted by Fabio 26 November 2018

Sharon Core is an American artist and photographer whose work uses art-historical conventions of landscape, portraiture and still life to explore questions of collective memory, the nature of authenticity and authorship, and the interplay between photographic truth and illusion.

She is best known for her “Thiebauds” series – A three-dimensional recreations of paintings from Wayne Thiebaud’s 1960s food paintings. Working from catalogue reproductions, the artist carefully baked and frosted pastries and other assorted treats from these paintings, carefully reconstructed his compositions and photographed the works. The final prints are scaled to match the original canvases. The irony of these works is that Thiebaud painted these works from memory so Core is recreating still lifes that never actually existed. At once playful and precise, Core’s photographs question the boundary between reality and artifice while overturning the conventional relationship between photography and painting.

www.sharoncore.net
www.westcollection.org