Let Us Eat Cake:The Real and the Representation

So I come across a reproduction of one of Wayne Theibaud's paintings. He's the guy that does the "pie bar" paintings, paintings of cakes in pies displayed in windows, deli counters, sandwiches...that sort of thing. As I am looking at the painting, because I do have a good deal of appreciation for his work, I notice something is odd. Gone is the gorgeous texture of the paint that is teasing the viewer as icing. The colors are bright and sharp where Theibaud uses a more nostalgic pastel palette. Hmm...

I discovered the amazing work of pastry chef and photographer Sharon Core, whose new body of work, Theibauds, are meticulously staged recreations of his paintings.

But my torturous hours spent doing battle with Jean Baudrillard were not all for naught as Core's photographs raise the issue of which is more real? The real, textural painting of an idealized memory of a cake, or her intentional duplication of it? And it is twice removed, as we are not presented with a showing of her pastry artistry. The cakes and pies and sandwiches have long ago met their demise. But we have the perfectly staged moment, captured forever.

What is real? What is hyperreal? The poetic, the duplication, or the image of the duplication?

Says Wayne: From when I worked in restaurants, I can remember seeing rows of pies, or a tin of pie with one piece out of it and one pie sitting beside it. Those little vedute in fragmented circumstances were always poetic to me.