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7 months ago
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Style|How Come Manet Never Painted Uncrustables?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/style/uncrustables-painting-noah-verrier.html
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Noah Verrier’s painting of a sandwich (minus one bite) sold for $4,999. Accused by some of being too commercial, he said he prefers objects “connected to who we are today.”
Sept. 17, 2024, 11:30 a.m. ET
Last week, Noah Verrier bought a box of crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from a Publix grocery store.
He unwrapped one and studied its pale, spongy exterior. He took a bite. The sunlight in his studio illuminated a droplet of strawberry goo.
Where others might have seen a Smucker’s Uncrustables sandwich, Mr. Verrier saw a muse. He spent two days capturing its likeness in a moody oil painting — and then sold that original painting for just under $5,000 in an online auction that ended Sunday.
Mr. Verrier, 44, an artist who lives in Tallahassee, Fla., has carved out a lucrative niche on social media with his still life paintings of junk food. He has rendered greasy cheesesteaks, extra-large sodas and dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets in delicate brushstrokes.
“I always try to eat something before I paint it, just to have that connection with it,” he said in an interview on Monday.
Mr. Verrier paints his subjects alla prima, a technique favored by the Impressionists that involves the layering of wet paint. Then, unlike the Impressionists, he blasts them out on his social media accounts: His Uncrustables painting has been viewed more than 12 million times on X.
