Caged Pie tells the story of a young Wayne Thiebaud.

A young boy is on his paper route smushing his face against the window of a bakery, not unlike the art of both Pipilotti Rist and Ana Mendieta, ogling at some pie perfection. Young Wayne Thiebaud (pronounced Tee-bow but no relation to the uber-religious football quarterback, Tim Tebow) was born in the 1920s and what do young boys who were born in the 20s do? They get a paper route. I guess it was a right of passage thing because seemingly every American man over the age of 80 had a paper route at one time in his life. Little Wayne (not to be confused with Lil' Wayne, they are very different people.) would go on his paper route and somewhere along the way he would find a bakery and ogle at the caged pies in the window. He remembers the frustration with not being able to “get at ‘em.” From this pent-up adolescent rage was born the painting, Caged Pie and many, many other pie paintings.

Thiebaud really nails the whole alluring, come-hither attitude this pie is giving us. It’s such a tease just sitting there all cute and untouchable. Honestly there should be a mallet next to it so one could smash the glass in the case of an emergency. Kind of like the glass covering a fire extinguisher in the event of a fire, but this emergency is more of a sweet tooth, emotional breakdown emergency, which is just as important!