William T. Wiley

Over the last half-century, William T. Wiley has been producing unique and zany paintings, drawings, and assemblages in the West Coast Funk style. As a founding father of the movement, he rose to national attention in the 1970s when the storytelling aspects and personal symbolism contained in his artworks were trendy and highly sought after. Since then, he has continued to produce works that demonstrate not only his skill as an artist, but his keen wit and satiric imagination. He often reworks classic masterpieces and transforms them into ironic statements about the contemporary world. Wiley's works all contain rich and complex symbolism, sometimes augmented by statements from the artist himself or calculated plays on words. The layers of pigment, humor, and deeper meaning create a puzzle for the viewer to explore and solve.

EXTENDED BIO

William T. Wiley (born October 21, 1937)[1] is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, performance, and pinball. At least some of Wiley's work has been referred to as Funk art.[2] He was born in Bedford, Indiana. Raised in Indiana, Texas, and Richland, Washington, William T. Wiley moved to San Francisco to study at the California School of Fine Arts where he earned his B.F.A. in 1960 and his M.F.A. two years later in 1962.[3] In 1963, Wiley joined the faculty of the UC Davis art department with Bay Area Funk Movement artists Robert Arneson and Roy DeForest. During that time Wiley instructed students including Bruce Nauman and Deborah Butterfield.[4] According to Dan Graham, the literary, punning element of Nauman's work came from Wiley.[5] Wiley also acknowledges the effect Nauman had on his own work.[6]

His first solo exhibition was held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1960.

In the late 1960s Wiley collaborated with the minimalist composer Steve Reich and introduced him to Bruce Nauman.[7]

Wiley continued to build upon his growing stature as a major artist with works appearing in the Venice Biennial (1980) and Whitney Biennial (1983). He also had major exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1981), M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco (1996), and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2005).[8]

In 2009, the Smithsonian American Art Museum presented a retrospective of Wiley's career titled What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect, from October 2, 2009 through January 24, 2010. A review in the Wall Street Journal stated: "Mr. Wiley's work is unlike any other in recent art... He is less a contemporary artist than a national treasure." [9][10]

In 2010, the retrospective moved to the Berkeley Art Museum, from March 17 to July 18. The catalogue for the retrospective, "What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect", was co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and University of California Press.[11]

Wiley also has works in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among many others. Wiley was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2004.[8] He is represented by Hosfelt Gallery[12] in San Francisco and by Maxwell Davidson Gallery in New York City.

REFERENCES

http://www.williamtwiley.com/Wiley%20Words/Wiley06bio.pdf

Jump up ^ Artspeak, by Robert Atkins, 1990, ISBN 1-55859-127-3

Jump up ^ William Wiley - San Francisco Art Institute

Jump up ^ myartspace>blog: Art Space Talk: William T. Wiley

Jump up ^ Dan Graham, Alexander Alberro, Two-Way Mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham on His Art, MIT Press, 1999, p112. ISBN 0-262-57130-7

Jump up ^ Wiley quoted by Paul J. Karlstrom in Stephanie Barron, Sheri Bernstein, Ilene Susan Fort, Reading California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000, University of California Press, 2000, p100. ISBN 0-520-22767-0

Jump up ^ Robert C. Morgan, Bruce Nauman, JHU Press, 2002, p61. ISBN 0-8018-6906-4

^ Jump up to: a b www.williamtwiley.com

Jump up ^ http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2009/wiley/

Jump up ^ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703683804574532482514890604.html

Jump up ^ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0520261216

Jump up ^ http://hosfeltgallery.com

Jump up ^ List of Collections from http://www.magical-secrets.com/artists/wiley