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10-15-1981 William T Wiley The iV sual Arts Gallery at Florida International University Frost Art Museum The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum

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Recommended Citation Frost Art Museum, The iV sual Arts Gallery at Florida International University, "William T Wiley" (1981). Frost Art Museum Catalogs. 56. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/frostcatalogs/56

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May 2 to May 31, 1981

University Fine Arts Galleries School of Visual Arts Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306

Oct. 15 to Nov. 25, 1981 Beth Coffelt Matthew Kangas Arts Visual Gallery John Perreault International Florida University Brenda Richardson Tamiami Campus Albert Stewart Miami, Florida 33199 Mr. and Mrs. Harry W. Anderson Matthew and Wanda Ashe Mr. and Mrs. Gerald W. Bush Mr. and Mrs. Byron Cohen Delahunty Gallery, Dallas Des Moines Art Center Sarah Estribou-Franklin Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York Diana Fuller Dorothy Goldeen Graham Gund Hansen Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco Bob Hudson Elaine Horwitch

Mr. and Mrs. William C. Janss David Lawrence Robert Mann Myra and Jim Morgan Morgan Gallery, Kansas City, Kansas Barbara Morris Ralph H. Perkins and Steven Smith Mr. and Mrs. C. David Robinson Robert A. Rowan San Francisco Museum of Modern Art William and Deborah Struve Walker Art Center Richard and Barbara Wallis Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Dorothy Wiley William T. Wiley Private Collectors

Cover: THE BALANCE IS NOT SO FAR AWAY FROM THE GOOD OLD DAZE, 1970, watercolor and ink on paper, 22 x 30, Collection David Lawrence, Chicago <, In the 1960s, the Bay Area became the In 1979, the Walker Art Center in Through special support of the University "fountainhead" for an important shift in Minneapolis organized the exhibition, System, Florida State University has contemporary American art. Artists WILEY TERRITORY. The Walker become a major center for contemporary art working in the area began to achieve assembled for the first time a large body of in the Southeast. This exhibition forms a national attention for their "individual" information and works from the past ten part of the Fourteenth Annual Fine Arts approaches to making art and their years. What their effort has meant to our Festival, and acknowledgments at this time irreverance for prevailing art doctrines. exhibition is the accessibility to a great deal would not be complete without two very Their approaches became very contagious of information and material. We want to special ones. We want to express our thanks and indicative of growing attitudes that thank the staff of the Walker, and especially, to Dr. Bernard F. Sliger, President of the spread to other parts of the country and Graham W. J. Beal, curator of the University, for his efforts in gaining encouraged new audiences to become more exhibition, and Gwen Bitz, the registrar for additional support for the arts at Florida receptive to the possibilities of major art their assistance. State University and providing the funding being produced outside the art centers of the for the Festival. Also, thanks to Dr. Jerry L. Never has a more of Northeast. important aggregation Draper, Dean of the School of Visual Arts, works involving a development in whose understanding and support have There are many artists in Florida and contemporary art been assembled at Florida contributed more than anything else to the throughout the Southeast who continue to State University. Nothing is more difficult Galleries' objectives as an information and share similar attitudes in their artmaking for a collector than to part with works for a documentation center for contemporary art. and, in some measure, are influenced by the period oftime. We are grateful to the many developments that occurred in California. collectors as well as the museums and Again this year, we extend a special thanks The Fine Arts Galleries are pleased to galleries for their spirit in sharing their to the Friends of the Gallery for their present, for the first time in the region, an collections for the duration of this exhibition generous support. We are also grateful to the exhibition that deals with one of the most and helping us to reinforce our commitment University of South Florida for scheduling significant influences during this to a large and diverse audience in our exhibition later this year in Tampa. development, WILLIAM T. WILEY. contemporary art. Finally, a personal thanks to Secretary of William T. Wiley's art is an incredible range Writers have turned to a multitude of words, State, George Firestone, the Department of of ideas, materials and images with an hoping to see a little more clearly some State, the Division of Cultural Affairs, the amazing breadth and depth that aspect of Wiley's work. Many would agree Fine Arts Council, the National Endowment distinguishes him, as John Perreault writes, what inadequate stuff words prove to be for the Arts, a federal agency, and the

". .. a special artist and probably a great when compared to his ability to present to Florida Legislature for their continued "1 one. those who investigate his work a very confidence in our programming and their special experience. We are pleased to have support in making this exhibition possible. Nearly two years ago, the Galleries staff the opportunity to assemble five essays for began the organization of this exhibition of this catalog and express our thanks to the A.S. works. We our thanks extraordinary express additional authors and the publishers for to William T. Wiley for his trust, confidence their permission to reprint some of these and enthusiasm for our His presentation. investigations. collaboration has been an invaluable expenence. Of the Galleries staff: Janet Mauney for publicity, Sharon Collins for registration, This exhibition and accompanying catalog and Susan Parks, as secretary, have could only have been achieved through the contributed not only efforts necessary to the full of the staff, volunteers, cooperation accomplishment, but also patience, good advisors and the friends of the artist. many humor and wisdom under extraordinary of time and At the beginning of our plans and pressures responsibility. throughout the remarkable undertaking, A special thank you to Richard Hubbard, there has been one individual whose total my assistant and preparator, who gave not devotion, friendship and faith has gone . only his talents and energy, but also beyond the call of duty. Without Wanda enthusiasm to every aspect of the Hansen, agent, the exhibition Wiley's exhibition's organization. Also thanks to would not have been possible, and we Bill Celander, the technical staff and many our warmest thanks. express volunteers for their efforts in making the 1 John Perreault, "Wild, Woolly Wiley, "The Soho exhibition a success. Weekly News, November 8, 1979, p. 56

1 LAME AND BLIND IN EDEN, 1969, watercolor and ink on paper, 30 x 22, Collection Mr. and Mrs. Harry W. Anderson, Atherton, California

2 Mr. Unatural

" "Funk, an exhibition at the University of mainstream art (even before the term others, and eventually I met Wiley and other California, Berkeley, in 1967, was a pivotal "alternative" became a widely accepted artists who became a stimulating part of my event in contemporary art. It not only substitute for "avant garde"). life in California. brought national attention to a particular A collective sensibility existed with the After meeting Wiley, making several visits group of artists working in the Bay so-called Funk artists; their forms to Forest and in a number Area-William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, grew Knolls, partaking from a relaxed enthusiasm about the of with his I to Joan Brown, Bob Hudson and others-it gatherings friends, began creative process itself rather than from an understand what had attracted me to him. grew out of an anxiety about the lack of habitual inclination to follow fixed, external His works exude a sense of familiarity while support for their common interests as well as ideologies. Their art concerned itself with encorporating a wide range of images and a frustration with the current and pervasive 1 life as matter: and his content and are unlike aesthetic doctrines. everyday subject clever, silly, writing, style dumb, tactile, ironic concerns-all were those of any other American artist; they are At that time our national and international valid. Ideas became contagious and, intensely individual. Themes, puns, problems had placed American society in a therefore, mutually supportive. Joseph riddles, wit, humor, and iconography are state of flux stemming from an almost Raffael expressed to Peter Selz in 1973 that mixed to give everyday (down-home) feudal centralization mechanism in both his life in New York had been a function of autobiographical subject matter a certain politics and art. Art dogma and criticism being an artist; in San Francisco, his art specificity and poetic structure. The result is seemed exclusively devoted to the current became an outgrowth of Iiving.? From this a personal synthesis that reinforces all I have developments of minimalism and group, William T. Wiley emerged as seen in Wiley himself: his lifestyle, his conceptual art occurring in New York. Most impresario of this new and intensely offbeat experiences,· his obsessions, his predilections centered around art that was consciousness. vulnerabilities, his tenderness, his becoming less intensively expressionistic acceptance of everything as content for My first contact with this Bay Area theater and more formal and restrictive, either in artmaking. Like his art, his life is enigmatic (the term "theater" gives it a proximity to abstraction or in lean-looking and extremely elusive. similar Dadaist ideas) occurred in 1976 in (non-object-oriented) conceptual art. the San between Fresno and An instinctive in Perspectives and permissions regarding the Joaquin Valley history emerges Wiley's Modesto on 99. For some reason I of and his "look" and subject matter of art became Highway repertoire personal iconography had left the obscurity of a small East Texas case of characters, which grow and exceedingly narrow. subtly town for the Great American Dream. ("Go accumulate meanings and In San Francisco, as well as in other parts of West. "1 did.) I felt much like a character interrelationships. Themes about the country, sensibilities and judgements from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath minus the wayfaring, the vastness of the American were dominated by these attitudes. Many dust bowI and the Great Depression. I West, magic, and his own art persist-The (rebellious) artists felt that their natural decided to accept one of those visiting Hound Harbor Series, Land Escapes, aesthetic impulses were being subtly artist's positions available in the state Nothing Conforms. Mr. Unatural (the distorted, and they determined that art could university system, and I found refuge in dead-on self-portrait, the spinning be idiosyncratic. A low-key form of art academe. Never expecting a life-support jester/alchemist clad in kimono and wooden criticism, a sagging patronage, an active reason (a job) to bring me to Lotusland, I clogs, with magic wand and conical hat), political climate, and a geographical was delighted to move closer to the Bay Captain Nobody, Zenry (the mute voyeur distance from New York allowed these Area enigma machine to which I had been and monitor of events), Rim Rat non-mainstream anxieties to emerge attracted since my student days in Austin. (Rembrandt), Sir Rot (Seurat), and other without much resistance in the "Funk" personae are Wiley's absurd and forceful One day I was working in my new 3 show, and emerge they did in art that was autobiographical associations. environment, stumbling around in a very funny, corny, ephemeral, autobiographical, well equipped university studio (which was Symbols, like character, repeat in sometimes ugly, and of course, irreverent. It Wiley's not unlike what I had envisioned as a set for images also-triangles, pyramids � was Nietzschean in spirit, and, despite a film on the subject of fascist ideology and cross-hatch marks, tic-tac-toe marks, many critics' brilliance in evaluating art in the of when some visitors and boat general, "Funk" eluded them. Therefore, it purpose art), hatchets, skeletons, figure-eights, arrived. They were working on an parts (to mention a few) are seen but never was soon inaccurately labeled as a and our clarified. As a visual movement not to be taken seriously. art-for-public-buildings program, completely conversations centered around the basic vocabulary, they are signatures that chart his Funk, however, was never a movement at proletarian ideas about public art. I didn't personality with repeated, evasive clues. all-any more than "regionalism" is a expect to see or hear from them again. Even a patterned Wiley surface is a mirror of movement. It was, more accurately, a state However, I received a letter in the following his consistent touch, as well as a structure of mind. But regardless of terminology, spring asking me to join them in Sausalito to into which his signs and symbols are placed. Funk was an important alternative to continue our discussions. These visits led to

Reprinted with permission from Images and Issues, Los Angeles, Spring, 1981. 3 The narrative subjects that appear (or seem with the others Laying like a brace for with my observations and interpretations of to appear) in Wiley's works are not linear some unrealized disease. the curious obstruction. I was well into my story-telling, but metaphorical recording. "deciphering" when perplexed expressions Wiley sustains the reality/mystery paradox Ideas, events, and emotions are appeared on the other.s' faces. Obviously in this three-dimensional work. The accumulated in a mutative process that there was something about this situation that constructions precariously combine a combines similar and dissimilar ideas. At I had not grasped. At that point Wiley told variety of dissimilar objects (hides, felt, times the writing. supports the contextual me that the old, worm-eaten oak had fallen logs,junk, lead, etc.) which in turn become roles of the images with crystal-clear just prior to my arrival and crashed into energized by their unlikely placements; they expansions of the ideas pictured, as in The Wanda's International Travel-All. I had become less bound by their inherent Prisoner Concept. At other times the noticed the truck, but its devastation was physicality than by their newfound irony writing is poetic adjustment: it illustrates hidden among the limbs. I was so through association. When the works Wiley's stream-of-consciousness preoccupied with the "abstract" elements of become more physical, the perceptions meanderings-as in Twice Upon a Time. As the setting that I failed to see the reality. I felt become more abstract. Wiley describes a the viewer is led from one detail to another, "lame and blind in Eden," and the mood particular process of discovery in Thank You layered meanings combine and a kind of immediately from sober to Hide: changed nutty philosophical balance emerges from humorous. My experience was more the tension. than I had realized at the I found the hide at a flea market . . . poignant time, it home and tacked it on the wall leading to a sort of reciprocal understanding But and brought deciphering Wiley's metaphors of art. In addition to an · . . When it was I saw the Wiley's my gaining is of the he hanging there, symbols only part puzzle a United States echoed in the ... I unexpected education, Wiley acquired illusion lures viewers to shape presents. Enticing deal of firewood and Wanda a new was reading Nietzsche's Beyond Good great got close examination but, at the same time, car. and Evil. . . I can't remember what it obstructs direct communication of any was I read, but it was like these Zen discernable, comprehensible "reality." Wiley's art, though encompassing an things. I saw something on that hide. Lame and Blind in Eden, a remarkably expansive range of ideas and images, is not "Thank you," I thought. The rest was lyrical and beautifully created watercolor, is overtly political or concerned with social built up from objects around the studio filled with a sense of desperation, loss, change, even though he illuminates the · .. There's a fish lure I found on the decay, and devastation. The overall effect human condition and its fragilities, beach, some bones . . . a fishing pole could not have been achieved without vulnerabilities, obsessions, urgencies, and · .. I figured I was probably fresh bait Wiley's intensely precise draughtsmanship potential for change. His skepticism and for Nietzsche." and interest in mood. However, his clarity humor take art beyond our traditional and facile drawing are the keys to the On my last visit to Forest Knolls, I began to assumptions-not with a "regionalist" paradox: although the viewer is attracted to understand another aspect of this personal temper or accent, but with a broad concern the images through their exquisite synthesis. Upon arriving, I encountered a for universal human issues. appearance, the rendering sets up a distance large oak tree lying across the front walk of The influences on Wiley's work are between viewer and image. Wiley's familiar Wiley's house. The tree did not look numerous and far-reaching: totemic symbols are readable without much particularly out of place, since the setting, qualities (as seen in primitive art) find their difficulty, but a real-life translation is like many of the spaces depicted in his way into such pieces as Thank You Hide and impossible. The overall, disconcerting flat works, was filled with a variety of objects, It Remains to Be Seen. Playfulness makes space and the inclusion of unexplainable materials, buildings, hills, and vegetation. his art difficult classify with other objects appearing to function as symbols However, there was something to, Duchampian anti-art, but wordplay and a (concrete pool, clipboard, telescope) make disconcerting about the location of this tree. nihilistic juggling of ideas make the his pictures visionary, surrealistic, and My curiosity was stirred. This was probably connection clear. Also, the wire puppet in mysterious-certainly not real. Wiley's another work in progress, I thought-one of Dried Ox-Bow Trail is as much at home in its fascination with the potential of things­ those elusive obstructions placed there to dried river "territory" as De Chirico's their metaphysical possibilities- veil some inner enigma-or, more likely a faceless mannequins in their Surrealist and his childlike obsession with the barrier for his pri vacy. Challenged, I landscapes. Comparisons with the dream mysterious and the absurd are constant, as crawled under the tree and entered the auras and male fantasies seen in H. C. seen in his writing in Wizdumb Bridge. house. Inside, Wiley was having lunch with Westermann are inevitable, and many of his wife, Dorothy, his son, Ethan, and Dad's toolbox always contained an Wiley's ideas are collectively shared with Wanda Hansen. The mood was sober, and instrument which I could never define a Bruce Nauman, Robert Arneson, William was some to there reluctance the 5 purpose for. Dad wasn't crippled in any Allan, and Robert Hudson. Wiley explains conversation. I was determined not to let my that I could see at that time, the his of these influences, and way yet out of hand and I understanding imagination get , persisted tool that didn't seem to fit was in there

4 their importance, in his statement on Duchamp:

The puzzle of a man or a man's life should

be enjoyed, not feared ... We must use his example of mobility and flexibility as an imperfect but well-intentioned model

for existence. . . Yet should we find in his example a path that interests us, we should trust ourselves enough to follow that path as long as it is possible without an overabundance of human misery. If your life becomes unhappy or wretched, you must have the trust and presence of mind to alter the relationship to one that is less destructive. The pain and joy of your life (are) essentially up to you. Both pain and its absence must be allowed for."

This concern of Wiley's for the quality of life inspires a seemingly limitless flow of energy that moves from his own life through his art to other people, who often, admiringly, become transformed by his special visions. His energy and wit "surface and sing" in the most unexpected ways, and, although his images are singular and idiosyncratic-or because they are, at a time when traditional art sometimes appears to be lifeless-his aesthetic has been widely influential and imitated in contemporary American art.

'Peter Selz, Funk, University of California, Berkeley, 1967. 2Peter Selz, "Six Artists in Search of San Francisco," Art News, Summer, 1973, pp. 34-37. 3Beth Coffelt, "Beyond the Flesh, Beyond the " Bone, San Francisco Sunday Chronicle and Examiner (California Living magazine), May 29, 1977, pp. 20-22, 27. 4Graham W. L. Beal, Wiley Territory, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1979, p. 41. 5 John Perreault, "Metaphysical Funk Monk, "Art News, May 1968, pp. 8-10. 6Brenda Richardson, William T. Wiley, University of California. Berkeley, 1971.

5 I Am My Own Enigma

James Joyce wrote that an object "achieves of Dali and De Chirico, and also by Arp, students-among whom at that time were, its epiphany" when "its soul, its whatness, Klee, Miro, Brancusi, Morris Graves, and respectively, Ralph Ducasse, Elmer leaps to us from the vestment of its Mark Tobey-among McGrath's favorites. Bischoff, Nathan Oliveira, Ralph Putzker, " appearance, and this concept of epiphany There were frequent side trips to Seattle to Frank Lobdell, and Manuel Neri, Bill Geis, comes as close to describing the essence and visit galleries and artists' studios (and even Jerry Ballaine, Joan Brown, Bob Hudson, intent of the work of William T. Wiley as occasional trips to San Francisco and Los and of course Bill Allan. He was especially anything I know. Joyce said that the Angeles), and Wiley feels he had a very drawn to Lobdell, who seemed to him to be " epiphany was the moment in which "the significant exposure to a wide range of art very "straight and serious and caring, with soul of the commonest object. . . seems to and ideas and techniques through an intense but intelligently removed us radiant. "Thus, by an absurdly happy and McGrath's classes. relationship to his own work. The presence anachronistic coincidence for me, Joyce of Lobdell and Still in Wiley's painting from After high school graduation in 1956, described Wiley's work better than I could: that period is very strong-and Wiley is the McGrath discussed with Wiley various each piece that Wiley produces embodies a first to see it and appreciate it. possibilities for further art study, including new epiphany, an evocation, a sudden the Cooper Union, the Art Students League, While in school he learned much from the perception of essential meanings, a special and the San Francisco Art Institute. Bill figuration of Bischoff and Oliveira, and insight that we could get no other way. Allan, who went to the same high school, even more from the abstraction of Lobdell. Wiley has been making art since he was had been at the Art Institute for two years by Just the same, he formulated a style quite small, and he learned very early that then, and encouraged Wiley to come to San uniquely his own, so much so that since art set him apart, in both positive and Francisco to study, and that was his final 1958 his work had been included in several negative ways ("I guess having been into art decision. exhibitions both locally and in New York for a long time, even in grade school, and had caught the very favorable attention I was pretty knocked out by the school, immediately you get some kind of feedback. of several New York critics. At that still felt a little bit shaky about it, seemed like If you can draw a tractor or a car, even a little early date in his career New York critic Dore a lot of the skills and badges I had bit, you get some kind of power through Ashton wrote of his paintings: accumulated back in high school just it-trade for something, acquire things, didn't hold that much water. But I guess I found a pronounced streak of originality time out of class to do what you want. ")1 He whatever belief I had in my own work, in his work, an authentic expressionist was fortunate in finding friends and teachers and whatever eagerness I had to get it on, sensibility, and the makings of a major who recognized and encouraged his abilities I just adopted pretty much anything that painter. In a normal and wholesome way, as an artist, and his enthusiasm for art as a came along. I liked all the different ways he has learned much from his elders.. . . way of life never really wavered. He says of seeing, and different ways of doing Yet none of the echoes in his work ever that during his first year at the San Francisco things. I'd never seen so much of all that dilute its own strong flavour. .. . Wiley's Art Institute the idea was suggested to him before. Things seemed bigger, sort of specific adaptations include the romantic that perhaps he shouldn't be specializing so "more," more paint. In class we'd sort of passion for huge formats, often soon, that perhaps a liberal arts education worked with small things, light paper, double-panel compositions; the use of the would be the wiser course. He remembers and tempera, delicate things, quiet expressionist blur which softens forms thinking that over and discussing it with Bill things. At that point I got sort of heavy and makes their surfaces vibrate; and a Allan, who said, "Well, that's fine if you into Francis Bacon, mainly just the stress on asymmetry and diagonal don't know what you want, but I know what I He has also some of " technique, that kind of blurred quality. dynamism. joined I want. And Wiley says that ofcourse then did that a lot, and And I the younger artists in the incorporation of he too realized that he knew what he drawing. finally used some of those techniques to shift emblematic Americana-stars and wanted, and it was art without any from I started and of reservation. away specific figuration. stripes, ambiguous symbols mixing in figures, animals, still life, popular culture. Yet, for all these familiar In high school in Richland, Washington, landscapes, sort ofblurring and smearing ingredients, Wiley has not forfeited that Wiley got special encouragement from his to obscure some of that information that which is his own. Specifically, Wiley's art teacher, Jim McGrath. He remembers was drawn pretty specifically. Pretty own personality is expressed in his use of

almost-readable .... In his that McGrath was completely open to all heavy emphasis on dramatic contrasts, symbols small to manifestations of creative energy, and used too. oil sketches, his urge symbol in his own work words and sounds as well as becomes more explicit and he has At the Art Institute he learned a great deal purely visual imagery, inspiring in his experimented with montages of about the skills and techniques ofpainting, students a particularly receptive and tolerant symmetrical images, repeated slightly but much more than that was the important two or three times on the same attitude about every possible aesthetic and differently exposure to the professionalism and social variation. Wiley recalls that at that page.2 seriousness of his teachers and fellow time he was particularly struck by the work

6 At the Art Institute, too, he had been taught uninspired students. He doesn't have a and its corrupt aspects, but it was a total to hold a fairly conservative attitude about teaching "method," except talking to part of the cosmos, just as everything is. " showing and "commercialism, an attitude students at any time on any subject, and Wiley's career spans a multitude of which he adopted with some reservation. gentle suggestions of possible directions "styles," both formally and conceptually. they might take in their work. He has no set I think there was a lot of Still's attitude in He has worked in virtually every possible expectations from his students, so he is there about not showing until it was right. medium, traditional (oil, acrylic, totally receptive to new ideas and seemingly I think that's a sound watercolor, wood) and otherwise Ultimately very unorthodox proposals and projects. There is plaster, idea, you are the artist, and you are the (twigs, leather, felt, dust, wax). He has no predetermined "right way" to handle an one who has to figure that out. When you done paintings, sculptures, drawings, art problem and no particular response is feel right about it, the work can be shown. watercolors, pastels, constructions, any more appropriate than any other. In this You have to realize that can have earthworks, theatre events, music just you atmosphere of both form and intellectual that much control over it. But then the composition, conceptual projects, and freedom, both minds and skills seem to idea came through a of times that films. He makes no comparative judgment couple flourish, and there is a relaxed enthusiasm the who wanted to that about the merit of medium or person buy about art at Davis that is due in no small any particular painting was really trying to buy you, or style in either his own work or that of other measure to Wiley's presence there. buy what you represent, or your energy. I artists-he loves Westermann as much as just kept thinking, nobody can really do His attitudes about art and the processes of Magritte, Clyfford Still as much as that to you, and I just decided, I should making and accepting art and art ideas are Duchamp. take those risks, and if that possibility very contagious, and have not been Wiley gets deeply involved with each of his was in there, I just might as well find it out restricted to his teaching. His energy has works, and as a result of such strong sooner or later. Itjust seems that anybody infected the entire Bay Region art personal identification with the pieces, he has a right to it, on whatever level they community to a considerable extent, and his frequently makes open-ended projects of can get it on. I mean, the idea that it was influence in the area has been and continues what from another artist might be a finished, bad for somebody to buy your painting to be intense. He is a source of constant static object no longer in his control. Wiley because it matched their couch. It doesn't encouragement to other artists, in an area often originates on-going exchange pieces matter. If you've got a good couch and a where low-key criticism, superficial with other artists; he does paintings that are good painting, and it takes care of a chain interest, and sagging patronage are sold partially incomplete, to be worked on at of visual events that gets it on for you, continuing problems, spiritual and some later time (a recent painting, for what's wrong with that? financial, to anyone determined to live here example, is composed of 100 balls, only 33 and function as an active part of the art I think art should be more and more of which are with the community. painted, remaining amoral, a realm of exploration. balls left to be painted in at a rate of one for Especially in school, if you could just get Although Wiley has shown regularly in New each year of the artist's life-regardless of that idea across to people, itjust means a York since 1962 and has established a the ultimate disposition or whereabouts of whole threshhold of getting into art, or national (international) reputation for the painting); he frequently makes new the aesthetic experience, or awareness. himself, he has never had much desire to pieces out ofold ones-notably, a series of Just give people a chance to go into it and live and work there on a permanent basis. 1966 paintings which he later wrapped and really flesh out a lot of things and feel Neither does he isolate himself from the taped, transforming them into soft package themselves in it, without having to set up New York art scene as do so many West sculptures; he adds or alters written a commitment to it in any way-to trust Coast artists. He appreciates the value and inscriptions to "finished" watercolors; and them enough to believe their commitment intensity of New York,just as he appreciates less directly, though deriving from the same will grow out of their relationship to it. the strength and style of San Francisco. impulse never to close off the potential of a piece, is the frequency with which certain As soon as he graduated from the Art One thing that hit me the first time I was in pieces appear in other pieces-a Institute in 1962, he was hired to teach at the New York was when you ran into construction will reappear as a sketched University of California, Davis, and someone who was up for whatever you image in a painting, or a contraption painted although he has taken time off to accept were offering, the sensibility was honed from imagination into a watercolor will later several guest teaching positions at other right up and needed that information-it appear as a real object on the studio floor. schools, he is still a regular faculty member was just soaked right up like a sponge. This emphasis on the work as a continuous at Davis. He loves teaching, and he has a Then I saw why art existed in New York body is reinforced by his use of a consistent reputation for being a devoted and inspiring the way it did, the place it had in the group of themes and symbols throughout the teacher. He also has a reputation for being culture, why it was needed and how much work-especially the pyramid, striped or able to draw it was needed, and that it was like good, original, interesting any checkerboard grid, infinity sign (reworked work out of previously completely other power in the world. It had its good usually to a Moebius strip), the heart,

Reprinted with permission from The University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1971, exhibition catalog, "William T. Wiley." 7 lightning bolt, and star, the question mark, existentialist. He accepts everything­ and a painter's easel-some of which may ideas, events, people-as having equal disappear from the paintings for several value and equal potential. For Wiley years, and then suddenly crop up again in acceptance of the human condition is not unexpected places, This attitude about the merely an abstract concept-it is a way of work is only a logical extension of Wiley's life. Much of his power, personally and in personal philosophy and life style. He holds the work, derives from the fact that he does a position of acceptance and tolerance of all not contain his joy and faith-he expresses possibilities-his belief in unlimited it, with an almost mystic capacity of potential, his Zen acceptance of all transfusing his essence of strength, potential, precludes any closed systems in contentment, and quiet energy to other art or life. people. Wiley feels that the world moves as it must, and however, that may be is alright, While the lives of most artists are clearly or as Kurt \bnnegut says, "Everything is all focused on their art to the exclusion, more or right, and everybody has to do exactly what of almost art is less, everything else, Wiley's he does." more a by-product of his life. It's not that his art is unimportant to him, because it is, and Wiley is himself the greatest work of art he he cannot conceive of himself not making ever created, and to know him is to know art. But, just the same, he is concerned with everything in his art, and vice-versa. There life problems (rather than art problems) is a real paradox in both his life and his art, primarily, and his art happens inevitably in between being totally knowable and forever his life. seeming unknowable. Everything about Wiley is both more simple than it would Wiley is an extraordinary person. His art is appear, and more complex. "I am my own extraordinary because he is, not vice-versa. enigma," he says, a statement which is not He has been called witch and magician, poet meant to be enigmatic at all, but a statement and shaman. He insists he's no more special of fact and clarity about being alive. than anyone (and everyone) else. He is Nothing is really hidden in Wiley's work; all genuinely amazed and baffled at whatever meaning is present on the surface and is skills and sensibilities he has that lead direct and unselfconscious. Wiley's art is a people to new insights. At the same time he gift that reminds us of the wonder and is profoundly human, and is accordingly miracle of it all-it helps us to see with a minutely perceptive of human foibles and new calm what has always been there, and tragedies. He has a youthful humor, a to treasure the strangeness and beauty and punning wit, which takes its form in openness of it. modified cartooning, verbal games, "silliness," and clowning. He sometimes speaks in seeming riddles, sphinx-like, inventing new words or new spellings of old words to create puns or double meanings; other times his work is purely lyrical and its meaning crystal clear. His work is autobiographically inspired, with the everyday commonplace as subject, the intimate sketch as revelation, language as game and invention, and a passionate involvement with the folly and miracle of life. His is well-read, intelligent, 1 sophisticated, and highly developed All quotations from William T. Wiley are spiritually-though not in any formal way. excerpts from transcripts of taped interviews He enjoys life enormously, in each of its conducted by the author with the artist in May multiple facets. and June of 1971. 2Dore Ashton, "Abstract Expressionism Isn't " Wiley is a gentle fatalist, a sort of Zen Dead, Studio (London), September 1962.

8 STUDIO SPACE, 1975, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 83 x 80*, Collection Robert A. Rowan, Pasadena, California

9 Beyond The Flesh, Beyond The Bone

There have been in the twentieth century moods are paradoxical and change asfast all, you're a grad student now, you ought to two forces-plus mystifying clues to a as quicksilver and a writer needs a good know. third-that have made art different than mood to slide in on. Wiley is slippery ice. "Finally Bill would say, 'Well, if 's before, and even harder to explain. Marin nobody He is a man who to we as well artist William T. tall, handsome, quiet going say anything, might go County Wiley, equipped " paints and writes like a Zen Buddhist home.' with what he calls "a beginner's mind," in the Marin woods. His manzanita branches and considerable cowboy personal skill, I've known Wiley for fifteen years, but life seem insubstantial, more mythical than has fused two with the still molten solder of never "know" him. One minute real, to his work; a kid, you're the a compared lanky third. The result is brilliant if uneasy at a clown in a black kimono and born in Indiana, who wanders the West laughing the work a liaison, of master conjurer. His the next like some unknown sketches for bars, who comes ("feelings are trading candy works riddles never self-perpetuating you the of ") , to the big city of San Francisco from language quite get hang insulated by enigmas. heart Richland, Washington, to study art. your stops. work contains both Wiley's the theory of The I can him to is a will be this For almost only person compare Naum Gabo and the of Wiley forty year. non-theory Marcel King, in Carl Sandburg's story How Bozo twenty years he has been one of the most Duchamp. The Russian Constructivist the Button-Buster BustedAll His after and imitated artists around. Buttons, fascinated with the sought Gabo, potential to art of the King of the Broken Bottles, a wanderer the use of in actual " dynamics operation, said "Talent is the word, Fred Martin, one of wandering all over the world mumbling that art was not a fixed but a " state, process­ his teachers in the late 1950s at the San "Easy, easy. not an ultimate but a direction. Gabo goal, Francisco Art Institute, says. "He was the A few a also believed that and time were as years ago Wiley got letter from the space most talented person around. Gordon van as Stedelijk Abbesmuseum in Eindhoven, important volume. (Northern Washburn came out to judge a show and about a Californians a chance to see at Holland, work of his they had got this work gave him the big prize-all of a sudden " was a in an bought. It construction Running Fence, immense work of everybody began to notice Wiley. incorporating artist Christo Javacheff', who added the stump of a bay tree Wiley had found in hard work. uses near unimaginably increased scale to both He has done it by Wiley the woods his Marin County studio. space-twenty-four miles-and time-four himself as a stick offlint. He never fails to The stump, they said, was full of Capricorn years.) strike, whether the lamp is fueled or not. beetles eating their way out through the That spark, he seems to say; is what wood and even through some lead plaques the alias "R. Duchamp, using Mutt," counts-what happens after that is up to bolted to it. Small pyramidal piles of dust a common titled it signed porcelain pissoir, you. were building up on the floor. What ought to "Fountain," and submitted it to an be done about it? exhibition. That urinal took art out of the His influence as a teacher is incalculable. Bruce a now-famous former Their who saw in museums and academies and flung it back Nauman, question intrigued Wiley,

student of at U . C. calls him the situation some where it came from, out of the here into the Wiley's Davis, "interesting anywhere. the "strongest influence I had. possibilities," including just letting the beetles eat as much as they wanted, to see in our to "It was in being rigorous, being honest with But headlong rush track art history what would happen. (Very often his works to be a the linear Western we yourself-trying clear-taking along route, include change, or continuing process, as sometimes the moral position," Nauman says. forget Orient, whose arts, part of their central idea, either actually or traditions and have had such a philosophies "Wiley had a great personal involvement conceptually.) He found the prospect of effect on the West Coast; and we this of at work in powerful with students. He might say it was a terrible having army tiny helpers Africa and Oceania, whose the of a to be forget work, but he would get at why they made middle piece 7000 miles away arts hold the secrets of all "primitive" work. Bill was one ofthe first that gave me very satisfying. It is this "third beginnings. mysterious an idea about moral commitment, the worth idea" that is of all in work; But Wiley, one of the most cooperative strongest Wiley's of being an artist. It's that Art Institute the for our first artists around, was afraid that the Dutch nostalgia insights. morality-that art is an ethic. museum might have problems beyond It is there Wiley's work compels us to return, the fascination of a "One of the ways he operates-in a sharing watching piece the of beyond appearance things, beyond graduate seminar people bring work in for they had paid a lot of money for change the apparent logic of our lives, even if it from wood to sawdust. discussion. I guess they expected a pat on ineluctably means a descent into the maelstrom. the back. wouldn't Wiley say anything. He offered them several alternatives. wouldn't Half an William T. Wiley is a wild, somber, funny, They say anything. hour, gentle, profound, and elusive artist, the forty-four minutes would go by and nobody "Finally, I told them tojust kill the bugs and hardest to write about of I know. His would say anything. You'd think, 'Why in get on with it, "he says. "They fumigated any " hell doesn't he say something?' But after it.

10 He couldn't however, get rid of the idea of place of ink. Swarms of Venetian ants had design (for the San Francisco Mime the potential of these invisible yet resolute invaded the American pavilion; they must Troupe's King Ubu), films (Man's Nature kinetic forces at work in the stumps, logs, have thought it was heaven. Ruscha decided and The Great Blondino, which he made and branches-left in more or less their he liked the dark, swirling patterns they with Robert Nelson), collaborative natural state-he almost invariably uses in made, and the changing movement, and let drawing, performance art, printmaking, his constructions. them stay.) conceptual art, and painting.

"I wouldn't go so far as to get bugs in to eat For Wiley, who has been known to use Sometimes his work looks like something " the pieces, he says, "but . . ." everything from rusty tin cans, friction tape, an anthropologist sent home after a field trip dead leaves, dust, and a live spider in his to the Antipodes: aboriginal effigies and He looked around the studio at works in work, the possibilities increase exponentially. masks, legends and maps drawn on real or progress at the time, and noticed some trompe l' oeil wood or bark; spirit traps of "extra activity" going on in a new piece he This philosophy of Wiley's-of letting branches, bones, moss, wire. was working on, a stump forming a pedestal things happen, involving others in his work, for one of his recurring characters, Zenri opening up both ends of the creative process Then he comes in with a show of elegant, (from Little Henry), a cartoon head to serendipitous fortune-delights most of abstract canvases of deep, haunting space jigsawed from plywood and decorated with his admirers, students, fellow artists, and and pure draftsmanship, combining all the a manzanita branch and chicken bones. On friends, but makes museums nervous. Last scraps and symbolism into frescoes of his it he wrote a Wiley version of caveat year, as part of his one-man show at the odyssey through time and identity. emptor: Museum of Modern Art in New York, he These big paintings, really murals, are like turned one room into an in-process work. "just be the collective visual memory of a race of Part of one wall was provided for the low the nomads (a recurring word in his work) who spontaneous contributions of visitors. This wish bon return to the same wall to inscribe alarmed the MOMA officials, who feared every year es in code and their "I bugs that so an attitude pictograph, journeys. egalitarian might spread " are eat was here, seem to say, "and then I to other, more traditional, areas of the they mg me came there, and on this bridge I met a man, museum. The "people's" part was within a warning and he went with me for a time, me of seven-foot plywood heart attached to the telling sounds strange migrations . . ." In between he wall, with ballpoint pens hanging from it. In too harsh do a of water-colors, at the middle Wiley had written the samurai's might cycle lyric caution once realistic and (surrealistic), creed, and at the top of the words: "Draw enigmatic too tim " investing familiar icons like paint brushes " Your Heart Out. ide with the power to explode, or giving to a Wiley is so inventive, prolific, and deserted backyard greenhouse the poignant "I knew I was going to go on using the influential that writers in their wild attempts mystery of a dream. wood," he says. to put a handle on Northern California art Symbols of wayfaring have a special "I the answer seemed to be in use him as a nomenclature bank: "Pop thought letting fascination for In his Museum of " Wiley. in on what was on. Western," "Dude Ranch Dada" (Hilton people going Modern Art show last he used hobo Kramer, New York TImes), "Metaphysical year which had the these The museum at Eindhoven, Funk" (John Perreault, Village Voice), "Bay symbols, strange cryptograms show wanderers leave for each other on given Wiley a one-man retrospective Region Mythmakers" (Thomas Albright, lonely was fazed this trees, bam doors, railroad a in 1973, not particularly by Art News). depots: triangle entomological diversion, nor would any with three smaller ones means "tell a pitiful good contemporary art museum in the world But Wiley resists either leading or following story," a skull and crossbones means be. The elements of art have changed a "movement" classifiable by critics. His is "doctor," and so on. One of his major works the irreverent of was a drastically in the past twenty years. Artists spirit Duchamp, the ofthe late sixties "Ship's Log," large,

in the . If elaborate construction of canvas wood are using more than just the traditional poltergeist Zeitgeist anyone gets sail, materials of paint, marble, bronze, or anywhere close to defining him, he masts, boat parts and rope; along with it plaster. These "interesting possibilities" transubstantiates . went a handwrittenjournal of a voyage into come along frequently. the unknown, a Hunting of the Snark His work has a hundred spun through exploration amid the floating islands of the Venice Biennale in Los From the time of his first solo (During 1970, changes. illusion. Angeles artist Edward Ruscha noticed some exhibition at the San Francisco Museum in of this "extra activity" while installing his 1960 to last year's one-man show at the But it is 'the funky-mystic vernacular of "Chocolate Room," a whole alcove Museum of Modern Art in New York, he has western wayfaring-as if Everyman were a sheathed with paper that had been experimented with just about everything: cowboy and The Pilgrim's Progress along screenprinted with liquid milk chocolate in construction, sculpture, costume and set Route 66---that is vintage Wiley. Often he

Reprinted with permission from California Living magazine of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle (May 29, 1977) © 1977, San Francisco Examiner. 11 carries the western idiom to its furthest ... artcraft. Or he from bow to centers He wrote it, in other words, as he went

extreme by drawing ("colored in directly") game .. . target tickles all the same ... along, changing perspective with the

on untrimmed animal hides, like the Ghost like moths too fickle for the flame. . . a dart weather ("Spring Spits"), the! Ching, or Dances painted on buckskin by Yellow like velvet space to blame. Large small the Muse.

Nose, a Ute captive of the Cheyenne, in container sound and true. . . the vacuumed Except for a version of the journal in Ship's 1891. gaps to shape the hue ... With Log (Zephyrus Image Press, San Francisco, REASONSKILL the target known . . . In recent he has added the element of " 1969), Suite Daze will be years. beyond the flesh, beyond the bone. of Wiley's only words to his work: carved into wood, burnt published work outside the excerpts printed into leather, scrawled on paintings and Two years ago Wiley invented a cast of in Brenda Richardson's catalog of her drawings. As puns, koans, or conundrums, characters. Some of their names are puns: one-man Wiley retrospective at U. C. sometimes as whole poems, they add a Sir Rot (Seurat), Rim Rat (Rembrandt), Ray Berkeley in 1971. (Copies of that, long out non-specific dimension, like time to space. Done (Redon), some thinly masked aliases of print, are prized like diamonds.) His They also make art critics, who think for his own restless selves: Mr. Nobody, other writings-he has kept a journal for they're being laughed at, cranky. Words are Count Nowhere, and the ringleader, Mr. years-are locked in the vaults of the usually given the Wiley spellingjhe often Unatural. Smithsonian and the Archives of American leaves out letters or doubles others) and as it Art, from which they will be eagerly Mr. Unatural, who Wiley says is a "dead-on is with even the slightest juxtaposition of extracted when the word gets out that Wiley self portrait," came from a character he letters in familiar words-it' makes them is far and away one of the best poets around. in a put on by the funny-Wiley has just .broadened this to played performance piece William Blake could draw, too. combined art and drama departments at give double meanings: "Nomad is an U. C. Davis. He wears an old black kimono its island," "Modem Skullpture," "Enter Despite apparently kaleidoscopic " over a chest and an limitlessness of form, all work has rested?" "How to Chart a Coarse. gaping open sparrow Wiley's off-center belly button. He has a false nose running through it a leitmotif, like a This element of time/space/moodjuggling hooked on over the ears, wears Japanese submerged river, that more than anything is one ofhis most intriguing effects; you are wooden clogs, has skinny, hairy legs, a else characterizes the near-mythical enclave moved to look a long time at a piece; you drooping black moustache. He is also a from Big Sur to Mendocino-the land of keep discovering new things. Words, terrible ham. Zen and Beatitude, of thorny individualism silhouettes, igloos, log cabins, bridges and shared bread; the spirit of pioneers in a Mr. Unatural is never without three props: a appear out of an apparent chaos of cracked space age who have come to the end of high, conical dunce, or sorcerer's hat; a mud almost magically; many drawings look space, and are close to running out of time. black-and-white with a forked like puzzles-find the dog, telescope, striped pole tip; and a child's slate hanging over his neck It's a provincial philosophy, perhaps, in the monkey, sleeping man in a drawing of an with various commands printed on it. sense that it's western; but that home brew oak tree. And during those unguarded The pole has been showing up in his was heady enough to sell more Whole Earth moments while you're just having a good since Columbus Re-routed in than Bibles one and the time-who can tell? paintings Catalogs year, put 1960. Sometimes it is loose and meandering flagships of culture and industry into a At other times he is somber, philosophical like a path; sometimes coiled like a snake; holding pattern around a magic circle of ("I wish I had known earlier that you have sometimes twisted into an infinity symbol redwood trees somewhere north of the all the time you need, right up until the day ("inevitable rhythm locked forever with Golden Gate Bridge. you die"), mock-authoritarian ("If you get only minor variations," reads one legend); Someday we will understand what has too serious, you have to leave") or silly sometimes stacked like goalposts; but there happened here in the last twenty years: a ("rim a niss thass all we can do. ") it is, that conjurer's rope of black and white. revolution beyond comprehension. And that Then sometimes the mood is sustained, This year Wiley has taken another new same twenty years just happens to coincide slow, inevitably centered, as in a drawing of direction-unexpected but inevitable, like with the creative span to date of an artist a target, black and insistent in the center of a all his new directions. He has put out a through whose work we are becoming drawing of all-over lines forming rocks, book. ,Landfall Press in Chicago, whose known to the world. earth, grass, tree branches, a shed; white director, Jack Lemon, has supervised most "The forms are many," Samuel Beckett silhouette in the margin of a figure holding a of his print production since 1972, is said, which the unchanging seeks the of an arrow at the A Suite "through bow, tip looming publishing of Daze, containing " relief from its formlessness. bottom like the shadow of a camera. Under fourteen original etchings, a poetic it is written: commentary relating to the work, and a "Form is void, " said Lao-Tse, "and void is " group of hexagrams from the! Ching, which form. "The modem archer draws his bow. . . a Wiley consulted before beginning each way back he used to know. . . to chip the in Suite print. The text is a record of the making of "Roughly speaking," says Wiley of " flint and shave the shaft. . '. no separation "Norm is the book itself, the log of a creative cycle. Daze, lloyd.

12 FOOD DESCENDING THE STAIRCASE, 1980, charcoal on canvas, 92 x 118, Courtesy Hansen Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco

13 Metaphysical Funk Monk

Homely anti-objects with outrageous Funk is often very funny and/or sarcastic. It sense a key to his methodology and his overtones of nostalgia and mess: Funk Art is humanist without being sentimental. It concerns. It is a smoothly illusionistic flunks purist notions offinish, finesse and isn't "pure." One man's Funk is another painting of a shark-like "minimal" work of the fine art of abstract pomposity. Centered man's Neo-Dada. One man's Funk is sculpture, oozing blood. A cartoon-balloon in California's Bay Area, Funk is to some another man's bad breath or breath of fresh floating above the "sculpture" contains a extent a product of that style of life and that air moving in from San Francisco and reversed view. It is a painting of a work of lack of community support that are typical offering us an alternative to the Big art dreaming about itself. of the area, but it is also an anti-formalist Freeze-out that, in order to justify certain Although he is not familiar with the works reaction to current esthetic dogma. styles (which are often perfectly valid on of the eccentric, proto-Surrealist poet their own terms), has ruled out poetry, sex, New York is still the commercial and Roussel if there Raymond (the influence, , surprise and paradox from art. critical center of art in America, but Tenth comes down from Marcel Duchamp Street no longer exists in any real sense as a William Wiley's daring new works are as through Jasper Johns and Neo-Dada), breeding ground for new talent as it did in intriguing and as enigmatic as a Wiley exhibits a similar concern with the past. The new "Tenth Street" is spread picnic-table full of sticky paintbrushes, odd explanations that only compound the " out all over the other side of the Hudson: barbecue gear ("torture instruments), engimas of the things they purport to Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles, San soggy notebooks, eccentric rocks, logs, clarify. His new works are decorated with Francisco. Given the new facts of mass hatchets, handwritten poems in an strange titles, subtitles and paradoxical communication, instant publicity and easy unknown language and just enough rope. It paragraphs of explanatory prose. travel, provinciality in art is a state of mind, is very intriguing and enigmatic indeed. One of his watercolors illustrates an not a factor in geography. The artist's latest works, executed for the imaginary work of sculpture that consists Funk, at least in the highly sophisticated most part during his current but temporary of a rock supported by sticks and rigging. It version William Wiley offers us this month East Coast relocation after a European trip, leans over a water-box over which eight at the Allan Frumkin Gallery (May 7 -June consist of watercolors and sculpture that strips of colored cloth are suspended. It is 8), is not in the least provincial. Wiley's combine humor, sarcasm and titled Country School and is sub-titled with new work operates out of a sensibility that anti-formalism to create apodictic ironies the following story: "All morning Miss is completely aware of current esthetic and an exquisite sense of the vulnerable, Cary had kept us guessing. No. It wasn't concerns. His work is a reaction to and a the violent and the forlorn. Within the past the new textbooks she was so proud of. Nor denial of these concerns. His own year he has tightened his surfaces and the new foreign exchange student. Not the approach, however, is not less developed a dead-pan style of rendering new playground equipment. The new chern sophisticated, but in many regards more and execution that, although it moves away lab setup? No! The room's new color sophisticated, more complex, more from pure Funk fascination with the tacky scheme? No, that wasn't it. It wasn't the exciting on its own terms, as well as in its and the ephemeral, has had the effect of new P.A. system or the new gym, or the antithetical relationship to the Primary multiplying the ambiguities and deepening new lockers or the new lights. Was it her? Structures, Minimal or Stained Canvas, the metaphysical enigmas (a la De Chirico Her new hairdo, her new clothes, a new car, are new had she married the blank strangle-hold upon "seriousness" and Magritte) that the main apt. , gotten during and "modernity." characteristic of his work. He does not, summer vacation, a trip to Europe? Some however, disown the Funk label, and for of the board members were getting angry. It William Wiley's work is private, oneiric the most part his works are by far the most wasn't fun guessing anymore, when more and ironic, as is Funk in general. Funk is complex and adequately realized important things were waiting to be done. humble in its materials and in its sculptural embodiments so far of that peculiar new or pictorial presence. A Funk Object "When she finally told us, everyone was placed development. in a backyard amid clotheslines, amused, but it was kind of a let down. She ' playthings, rocks and logs or in an untidy Wiley's art is about art. Since he is a teacher said, 'Nothing had changed since last year. artist's loft might well go unnoticed. On the and an artist, art is almost the whole of his She smiled brightly. Later we all agreed other hand, its unassuming presence might everyday life and is therefore his most that Miss Cary was odd, but O.K." make everything around it take on that aura obvious subject. His beautiful watercolors To further complicate the issue, Wiley has of significance that we associate with are renderings of sculpture projects with constructed an actual piece of sculpture works of art. titles like Untitled Floating Sculpture, based upon this particular watercolor, Cap's Furrow, Random Digs and November If mathematics can be used to generate calling it Sub-Standard Test. The cloth Deadline. The sculpture, for the most part, visual forms, not puns, and the strips have been changed to grey felt, the why poetry is "about" painting. Not in the current of everyday water-box to a sandbox and the piece impenetrable peculiarities show, but included in this year's Whitney objects and everyday life, as in the contains a jar stuffed with cloth plus a annual, Wiley's Shark's Dream is in some remarkable works of William Wiley? further, even longer SUbtitle/explanation:

14 "Sub-standard test is about design intellect-rather than with a tape measure or inevitable design and testing for seeing and an art history textbook. thinking shrinking and expanding and will William is an new artist either record an encounter for you or you Wiley important who re-introduces qualities of subjectivity, will record your encounter with it. .. and and wit and makes them viable seeing and living and the fingers try complexity the use of new extremes and his desperately to the thing for the brain and to by by resourcefulness, his playfulness, his hold the hand the good way when it shook inventiveness. At a time when is badly and to be able to conduct yourself simplicity too often a disguise for simple-mindedness fully and inevitably in your ultimate design " and has become not a cliche, but a and just withstand a substandard test. only dogma, Wiley dares to be complex. At a Funk? .. . Once again we are offered a time when "meaning" is held to be vulgar, category that is beguilingly vague. "The Wiley dares to create works that are all term itself was borrowed from jazz: since meaning-layer upon layer contradictory, the '20s Funk was jargon for the dream-like and violently poetic. unsophisticated deep-down New Orleans blues played by the marching bands, the blues which give you that happy/sad " feeling, wrote Peter Selz in the catalogue for his omnibus Funk show last year in Berkeley. But I like William Wiley's explanation better (also from the catalogue): "I watched a lot of good Artists draw backwards in fear while other guys just stood around with fake velvet beards and gunny sacks lined with old Art Magazine covers to get you out on a snipe hunt and leave you in the desert while they sneak back to the fire and eat the weenies. Just mete out a little interest in survival kit form and it will find its place like balls of mercury rushing to the cold end of the thermometer. "

It may indeed be very cold at the other end of the thermometer, but, coming out of left field, William Wiley may be in the new center. The art that our senses and our sensibilities need consists of visual and semantic discontinuities. Wiley's new works are a threat to easy equilibriums. " They are not "beautiful. They are hybrids. They are not anxious objects or specific objects. Because oftheir extreme ambiguity and their mysteriousness, they are irrational objects, dream objects, metaphysical objects. The a-rational, irrational and meta-rational cannot be repressed for very long, power-Puritans notwithstanding. The viewer is forced to approach Wiley's watercolors and sculpture with his whole sensibility, his emotions as well as his

Reprinted with permission from Art News, New York, May, 1968. 15 READING THE STAINS, 1971, watercolor and ink on paper, 22 x 30, Collection Dorothy Wiley, Forest Knolls, California

16 Limits of Elusiveness

Much of the criticism of William T. Wiley's I think much of what has been dreary about Robert Arneson, the closer the link between art focuses on its hermetic quality, its Wiley criticism has been its acceptance and daytime reality and studio-time fantasy, the self-referential character, and its reliance on undertaking of an unravelling of meaning better. Is it any surprise that Brenda what Emily Wasserman described as through symbolic codes which have been Richardson comes right out and says it? "1 "intimate or insular biography. A broad connected to a purported recreation of Wiley is an extraordinary person. His art overview of Wiley's art-, however, and a Wiley's "state-of-mind" commentaries is extraordinary because he is, not re-examination of writing about him frequently appended to his art. While that vice-versa . . . Wiley is himself the suggests that this approach is perhaps an appending goes on unabated, I propose a greatest work of art he has ever created unduly complicating one. Wiley's art should temporary suspension of such a close, and to know him is to know everything be seen in the context of other American art literary reading of his art. The coincidence in his art and vice-versa.' of the 1960s and 1970s. How it was a and concurrence of artworks with events to abstract and Minimal the artists's own life I reaction, at first, and locations of may, Surely this is a wondrous claim. What about and how it became more and more an be set aside with art, think, occasionally great the rest of us poor shnooks in Tokyo, the on use of benefits. This seem to some a oblique commentary the geometric may perilous West Village, Belltown or on Hornby forms in art is a more appropriate and contrary task. Actually, it is a liberating Island? Richardson's line of thought investigation. one-for the viewer and for the reminds one that Kerouac himself was of the artwork itself. is independence Wiley probably a lot more exciting and clever in Rather than pursuing the Minimalists' no more "present" in his art once it has left than of his Structures idea of reductive person any woefully Primary the studio than Mondrian was in his; romans a clefs. It conveniently abstraction which was so exhibited disorganised widely Mondrian is as in his art conversely, present shifts the entire onus of the U. S. and Canada the interpretation away throughout during as If this is the then not Wiley. case, might from viewers' instincts or aesthetic analyses and a number of his past two decades, Wiley less newer, stringently biographical of any kind onto psychobiography-itself a lesser colleagues in the San Francisco Bay interpretations of Wiley's art be possible? California invention. Perhaps this comfy Region turned to their own fantasies and Even desirable? deinterpretive angle works better when Bill began a piling-on of imagery. When Donald is just a freeway hop away. Unfortunately, it Judd and Carl Andre were extracting and Wasserman and other Wiley critics have sidesteps dicier questions of meaning. reducing the range of pictorial imagery, held tightly to the artist's life and ambivalent Wiley kept opening it up. Fearing the pronouncements as keys to the meaning of John Perreault in a series of articles on his art. decorative trivialising dimension of abstract In perhaps the most fulsome Wiley came closer to the point by discussing art which Kandinsky first pointed out, encomium to appear thus far on Wiley, Wiley's relation to Funk Art". Nowadays, Wiley opted for chaos. Unlike the New Brenda Richardson' states the West Coast artists once associated with the Yorkers with their Golden Cubes and life-equals-art case for Wiley with movement squirm at the term yet Peter Cartesian simplicities, Wiley opened our unabashed fervor: "While the lives of most Selz's comment in the catalogue essay' for eyes to the entire cacophonous, bruising artists are clearly focused on their art to the the celebrated 1967 exhibition on the world and, adding a fillip of Zen Buddhism, exclusion, more or less, of almost "happy/sad" feeling of Funk correctly accepted all. Walt Whitman would have everything else, Wiley's art is more a describes a strong current in Wiley's art. "4 been proud. by-product of his life. On the Perreault's contention that Wiley surface-and undoubtedly after extensive "reintroduces qualities of subjectivity, In this way, he was both reviving certain discussions with the Marin Maestro complexity, and wit" into contemporary narrative conventions in American art long himself-this may appear to be so. American art also was true in 1968. Wiley dormant (David Smith's medallions, Paul Otherwise, how could those curious and the Funkers (Hudson, Arneson, Cadmus' soft-core Home Front paintings) notations be understood? I say, "But do they Melchert, Neri, Herms, Berman, etc.) and harking back to a more densely packed really need to be understood for a full raised playfulness to the level of an kind of composition-as with Jackson appreciation of Wiley's art?" Once again, aesthetic. That quality manifested itself Pollock or Willem de Kooning-which had biographical trivia passes as the through the wandering, extremely irregular repelled the supersober archbishops of meat-and-potatoes of contemporary art lines in Wiley's drawings and paintings. It geometry, Judd and Robert Morris. when it really is just the icing on the cake. allowed American art to breathe again at a Ironically, that brainy temptress, Geometry, time when large-scale sculptures But then, there may be deeper, sociocultural seduced himself and one suggested isolation booths or eventually Wiley reasons for this confusion. San Franciscans frighteningly of at his authoritarian structures. What happened way looking extraordinarily prolific have always preferred their artists and is to trace the appearance and with Wiley is that, through the '70s, he output writers to exaggerate and enlarge upon their continued interest in abstract and reintroduced certain formal controls in shapes life in their work. From Jack London on (see in his work. I do not call them addition to his freer "subjectivity, patterns his autobiographicalMartin Eden) right up complexity, and wit." These geometric symbols. to Desolations's Angel Jack Kerouac and

Reprinted with permission from Vanguard, Vancouver, B.C., December 1980/January 1981. 17 anchors-the infinity shape, pyramid, Destiny contributed to this mania. What's link to older artists who also became triangle, circle-acted as centralising entertaining about Wiley's "territory" is that preoccupied with the depiction of a shapes within the morass of his cluttered he has literalised the concept of Western generalised, abstracted landscape. Village studio topics. terrain and converted it first into a depiction Roots exemplified the map-effect of Wiley's of locationless land masses (seen one work in the early '70s. Thudarkages (1972) Rather than seeing these as deeply personal canyon, seen 'em all) and, later along, to a is a purer expression of this idea of No-space symbols-such as the black- and more specifically recognisable landscape: and yet the moment the eye sets on a corner white-striped pole-I see them as tentative suburban California. Without adhering to or a crag, No-space becomes Someplace. deferences to art styles with which Wiley the biographical reading of many of Wiley's has not been generally associated: Where is More often than not, watercolours of the '70s, one can cheerfully Someplace? Minimalism, Hard-Edge, Abstract it is some identifiable section of the glance at What's Left of the Garden and vaguely Expressionism, New Image and others. West. West is a Mirror (1973) or Lame and Blind in Eden Perhaps Wiley's quirky This is not to diminish the force of Wiley's cartoon version of the Yellowstone School. and see a potting shed in Marin County or a welter. Those All the it back and original jam-packed down the road. same, vacillates forth watercolours have been backyard always between crammed peaks and crags and a flat meticulously composed and toyed with such Similarly, Rim Rats Cabin (1975) is most surface composed of tangled lines. The traditionally modernist concerns as openly concerned with rainy Northern historical significance of Wiley's perspective and opticality. California landscape. I've Got itAll on the accomplishment is his having been able to Line (1970) not only contains hippy artifacts accentuate a superficially obscure The checkered square which has frequently like a leather cowboy hat and army fatigue interpretation of his work resting on his own appeared within otherwise representational shoulder bag (so what if they 're Wiley's!), it unique personality all the while driving pieces (Noihing Conforms, Blue Stump, opens out onto a typical suburban view of closer and closer to the flat picture plane. the St. Urchin, Toys of Nothing Changes) the California coast with houses nestled in offers an eye's resting place, an affirmation The chief difficulties in his art do not the hills and a smoke plume from factories of flatness within a deep-perspective picture surround the favoured down the coast-or across the Bay. literary interpretation plane, a positive-negative void amidst by his earlier critics; rather they deal with gleaming colours, in short, a little The plotting out of land-soon' to be reconciling a feisty will to complexity with a sensory-deprivation block within the visual subdivided by developers-has been a concomitant urge to simplified pictorial overload of Wiley's compositions. continuing theme in Wiley's art which has depiction shared by many New York artists allowed him to combine a reputedly of the '70s. The black-and-white rod or range pole, complex personal subject matter with less though it may have been a surveyor's tool The intricate nature of his links him overt yet nonetheless constant formal drawing found in the artist's father's toolkit? and on the one hand to surrealist and dada interests. The crabgrass-ridden yard in I've hence have personal associations, is also a forerunners like Dali, Francis Picabia and Got it A II on the Line, vertical fenceboard in diagonal pointer which intensified Duchamp's "machines" and, on the other, I. V. at the Window (1974) or the irregular perspective's playperiod (Wizdumb Bridge, to the wiggly, meandering line of a Pollock polygons doubling as parched earth in Land Escape, I Won't Forget Again One drip painting. The immediate difference Dried Ox-Bow Trail (1972) all are examples Jillion Times). In Bridgefor Irudy, it is a between Pollock and would seem, at of a regulating tendency in Wiley's art which Wiley vertical framing device which, attached to first, to be their attitudes toward may seem at odds with the anti-formalist subject the bridge of the title, forms one-third of a matter. And yet, just as there is a revised claims made for Wiley by his many critics. hidden triangle anchoring the drawing's of of Pollock's Although Graham W.J. Beal has claimed reading many paintings form. InPainting For Rain, it works less which more identifiable that the imagery of much of Wiley's suggests easily as a "charm invoked the than heretofore forthrightly by is "nautical "11 imagery thought present'" , "10 geographical meanderings , artist to break the 1976 drought than as a so I a look at I feel that the overwhelming majority of propose Wiley's large paintings high-contrast central shape which breaks up in the light of a less representational Wiley's "territorial" pieces are the monochromaticism of the overall That is to if it now seems earthbound. reading. say, picture. apparent that Pollock and, in fact, most of In the large paintings, this has led to the the Abstract Expressionists switch-hit The geographical subject matter in Wiley's building-up of line and a subordination of between abstraction and recognisability, so art is part of an already pre-existing tradition immediately tangible images. Village Roots it is conceivable to me to think of William T. of the art ofthe western U . S. Starting with (1972) has a distant antecedent in Mark Wiley as an artist whose work slips in and the 19th-century Yellowstone School Tobey's Moving Forms (1930) or his out of abstraction. (Bierstadt, Blakelock, etc.), painters tended Northwest Phantasy (1953) and I need only to be preoccupied with the Great Outdoors This double stream in his art-if we are to raise briefly the issue of the artist's and, concurrent with the rise of the camera, perceive it or grant it credence­ Washington State origins to suggest a faint wanted to capture its glories. Manifest necessitates a widening of our eyes. To

18 retain the surrealist cartoon approach to another-a tipped paint bucket. Place them To place templates of interpretation on an Wiley-with all the attendant Zen in the same picture and connect them with artist's work is not to confine it unduly; like run paraphernalia-is to, Zen, the line and an infinity curve. Voila'! Southwest sometimes it can free it to move and grow outside possibility of Enlightenment surrealism-and the watercolour Wizdumb more comfortably. The preparation for through contemplating the mundane. Or, to Bridge. The liberating incongruities of responses of the future, it could also be pursue the unravelling of Wiley's texts and surrealism were seized upon by certain West argued, is a purpose of criticism. follow the line of interdependency of image Coast artists desperately searching for and world, also might lead to non-New York paths to take in the '50s and understanding. My quarrel with those views '60s. The ironic thing is that only the of his work is that other, more Minimalists themselves achieved a instantaneously startling insights might be full-fledged reaction to surrealism. Wiley, needlessly precluded. his S.F. colleagues and the Abstract Expressionists all drank from the well of To to look at as more than the begin Wiley surrealism. Fountainhead of Funk or the Latter-day Saint of Surrealism or the Carrier of the The gesture painters (and Montreal's Standard of Representationalism is to automatistes) learned how to effect a deep release previous limits placed on his art. I release of "unconscious" powers. The argue for a fusionary view of Wiley Californians opened their eyes and, 10 and seemingly severed at first from the cuddly behold, the very world around them was context of Bay Region art of the '50s. This is Weird! The chronicling of that world-in to place in better balance the neglected parts watercolours, etchings, lithographs, of his art-colour, scale, structure-against sculptures, and paintings-is what William the decodifying density of an exclusively T. Wiley began to do in the early '70s. His is literary approach. a chronicle of suburban Pacific Coast Lifestyle. If Cyra McFadden's characters in Given the possibility of seeing Wiley as, The Serial ever knew an artist who was a say, an American illustrator instead of a household name, it would have had to be Guru of the Feel-goods, it might make sense Wiley. The Tenth Street boys, after all, were to cart out a few other old figures of doing a variation on the same theme in New American art like Reginald Marsh (also York: painting their own "landscapes"­ lEmily Wasserman, "William T. Wiley and concentrated on ink and watercolour) or Ben Kline's I-beam cross-bars, Pollock's William Allan: Meditating at Fort Prank," Shahn and is also a (Sacco Vanzetti A subway-map mazes, Rothko's rtforum , December, 1970, p. 62. narrative) and compare them to Wiley. The 2 smog-clouds. Joan Mitchell went off to Much of this discussion is based on the Walker distinction here, of course, is the of' Art exhibition hydra Paris and ended too: at Center-organized "Wiley up doing it, spring " surrealism. Marsh and Shahn were which the author saw at the Dallas working Bagatelle. Territory, out of socialist-humanist sympathies to Museum of Fine Arts. It opens December 11 at the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art. illustrate contemporary urban life. What Meanwhile, the big war that brewed up 3Brenda "I Am " Pollock and de Kooning took from Matta amongst American artists and divided-so Richardson, My Own Enigma, Introduction to Wzlliam T. Wzley, Berkeley: and Gorky was the surrealist automatist it seemed-formalists from realists, or University Art Museum, 1971. method. Their from from as borrowing surrealism, mythmakers documentors, appears 4Ibid. like was selective. has we face the 1980s to have on Picasso's, Wiley's been based 5 Ibid. been too much less discriminating, (dream distinct battle-lines than 6John Perreault, "Metaphysical Funk Monk," dislocated seen heretofore atmosphere, imagery admitted. William T. Wiley ART news, May, 1968, pp. 52-53. especially in his sculpture), but his shared epitomises this blur. His broadly prolific "Peter Selz, Funk, Berkeley: University Art pictorial concerns reveal his weakest oeuvre has flirted continuously with flatness Museum, 1967. relationship to surrealism: the conceit of and Primary Structures of sorts and SOp. Cit. 9Graham W.J. Beal, "The in arbitrary disjunctiveness. Magritte kept managed at the same time to contain an Beginner's Mind," Wzley Territory, Minneapolis: Walker Art trying to convince us that he could create a abundance of interpretations. This essay has Center, 1979, p. 29. new a to remove some of pictorial logic by placing racing attempted respectfully 10 Ibid. locomotive before a fireplace. the elements-intention, 11 Similarly, obfuscating Ibid., p. 36. and the successive of art text-and to restore or introduce Wiley generations biography, 12William S. Rubin, "Pollock as Jungian students from U. C. Davis to Pullman to different issues which may lead to new Illustrator,"Art in America, December, 1979, Calgary and back took this at face value. facets of meaning in his art. p.72. Choose an image-a stump. Choose

19 Dimensions are in inches; height precedes width precedes depth.

"u· "MODERN ARf TEACHER " 1966 II ' , ,/ \\ acrylic canvas, 66 X 86, Collection the Artist

"LAME AND BLIND IN EDEN," 1969, watercolor and ink on paper, 30 X 22, Collection Mr. and Mrs. Harry W. Anderson, Atherton, California

JIIci S" .t� c:l I'H.� � f. of iJt (0 r fJ'rn d � 611 f re fie c/{#\.I( I IH,"'1-4 rtt.-d i« 6ff0t;ire'S. J)tJJr �dO( bdk' �lald.r.J cOkfa,iu.d dH iPf­ ,..Ift( lIfe,.1 t.VIt,G6. / �"N(eI ;J.c,;� dtt.li� d J'ttAfl,S'¢' I"r. D�d W-'5'If/ cr;tttd I� dJtr u.t1& / c,t..t:leI ree Jr I.lal f. � l ifL t t� 14:>'-( 7'I.J f d, (:I.. 'f J�.eH � -t: f 41;1.r ilrf -rlu.u... tvi �� "fAD... d� 'diJ�1 hi<" d /,ra C4 �r rolil1l ttJf- M

UWIZDUMB BRIDGE," 1969, watercolor and ink on paper, 24 X 19, Collection William and Deborah Struve, Chicago

20 "FRONTIER LOONEY BIN," 1969, ink "READING THE STAINS," 1971, "BOBS HIDE," 1971, acrylic on felt with on X Mr. and watercolor and ink on 22 X and 90 x �/ paper, 22 30, Collection Mrs., / "paper, 30, rope, paper, plastic wood, 72, C. David Robinson, Sausalito, California.X, Collection Dorothy Wiley, Forest Knolls, Collection Elaine Horwitch, Scottsdale, California Arizona "THE BALANCE IS NOT SO FAR AWAY

" FROM THE GOOD OLD DAZE, 1970, "A KILLING LESSON NO.1 OR DRIED OX-BOW TRAIL," 1972, ,'x' watercolor and ink on paper, 22 X 30, AUDREY'S DOUBT," 1971, watercolor on watercolor and ink on paper, 22 x 30, VII. 30 x Collection Sarah Museum of Collection David Lawrence, Chicago \ paper, 22, Collection San Francisco Modem Gift of the Women's Board " Estribou-Franklin, Carmel, California Art, "SAILING PAST THE GUARDIAN, 1971, watercolor and ink on paper, 22 x 30, Collection Sarah Estribou-Franklin, Carmel, California

)(

/. "RANDOM REMARKS AND DIGS," 1971, painting of acrylic on canvas, 86 x x 115 40, construction of wood , metal and cloth, Collection Mr. and Mrs. C. David Robinson, Sausalito, California

21 "THUDARKAGES," 1972, acrylic on canvas, 84 X 192, Collection Des Moines Art Center, Coffin Fine Arts Trust Fund

"IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN," 1974, tree construction of branches , roots, acrylic on chamois hide, ink and acrylic on wood, j metal, string, leather, glass, English walnuts and spray can, 51 x 36 x 55, Collection Matthew and Wanda Ashe, Sausalito, California

22 "SAINTSPILL," 1972, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 102, Collection Mr. and Mrs. C. David X" Robinson, Sausalito, California

"THANK YOU HIDE," 1972, five-color lithograph on paper, 35 x 48, Collection of Des Moines Art Center

"WHAT'S LEFT OF THE GARDEN AND X MIRROR," 1973, watercolor, ink and colored pencil on paper, 30 x 22, Collection Mr. and Mrs. C. David Robinson, Sausalito, California

"ZENRY," 1974, construction of tree stump, ink on wood, manzanita, wood, rope, wire, glass and bones, 36 x 38 x 15, Courtesy Delahunty Gallery, Dallas

"RIM RATS CABIN," 1975, watercolor, ink, graphite and colored pencil on paper, 30 x 22, Collection Sarah Estribou-Franklin, Carmel, California

23 .�!l ... ') r)

"DOWN THE LINE WITH OL'SIR ROT, " 1975, construction of wood, branch, metal, leather and found objects, 32 x 13th x 11, drawing of watercolor and ink on paper, 30 x 22, Collection Ralph H. Perkins and Steven Smith, Chicago

24 "STUDIO SPACE," 1975, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 83 x 80*, Collection X Robert A. Rowan, Pasadena, California "MODERN LIMITS," 1975, acrylic on canvas, 75 x 96, Collection Robert A. X Rowan, Pasadena, California "THE RED PLANET AND BEING FROM THE RED PLANET," 1976, acrylic on \/' canvas, 84 x 74, mixed media drawing, 36 A x 25, Collection Sarah Estribou-Franklin, Carmel, California

"HOT JAZZ PNTNG WITH NO MUSIC," 1976, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 72 x 96, Collection Diana Fuller, San Francisco, California

"MR. UNATURAL AND FRIENDS," 1976, two part construction of watercolor, colored pencil and lithograph on chamois hide, plywood, rubber, cloth, wood, enamel and beans, 38 x 30 x 29; 91 x 82 x .21, drawing of watercolor and ink on paper, 31 x 23, Collection Mr. and Mrs. Gerald W. Bush, Sewickley, Pennsylvania.

25. "MUSE FROM A LIL CREEP VILLAGE," 1977, watercolor and ink on . 35* x 2914, Coll�ction Dorothy y:paper,Wiley, Forest Knolls, California /\ "THE PRISONER CONCEPT," 1977, graphite and wax on parchment, 38 X 251/8, i Courtesy Morgan Gallery, Kansas City

" "HOUND HARBOR FORECAST, 1977, watercolor and ink on paper, 22 x 30, Collection Graham Gund, Cambridge, Massachusetts

" i "AMERICAN RIVER RAFT TRIP, 1978, �_"DON'T FEED THE ANIMALS," 1978, graphite and color pencil on paper, 24 x 34, / Ink on paper, 14 x 20, Collection the Artist Collection the Artist "K.C. BLUES," 1978, watercolor and ink "CAPTAIN CROW BAR-O.O.W. III," on paper, 2214 x 301h, Collection Robert 1978, graphite, color pencil and ink on Mann, Kansas City, Missouri 38 x Collection of the Artist paper, 25, " � "KING GILLETTE, 1978, construction of '" "COY YOTE," 1978, acrylic on canvas, ! paper, wood, metal and wire, 52 x 36, 901h x 83, Collection Richard and Barbara Collection Bob Hudson, Cotati, California Wallis, Leawood, Kansas

26 "0.T.P.A.G.," 1978, acrylic and graphite R4 on canvas, 87� x 100�, Collection Mr. & - ·7 Mrs. William C. Janss, Sun Valley, Idaho

"TURNING TO DUST BEEF OAR YOUR WRYS," 1978, pencil, color pencil and ink on paper, 36 x 25, Collection Dorothy Goldeen, San Francisco

) ,4,{!lSCr ,I iJI., +0Z.IFf' :,'P6AC{' ,1WY/' {!lit N�J7;-1,/6 f'sr,� 1'¥t: AbPf'/

"NOTHING CONFORMS," 1978, watercolor and ink on paper, 30 x 22, Collection Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

27 "QUALMS FOR THE BORE," 1978, watercolor, crayon, ink and graphite on paper, 30 x 22, Private Collection

28 "THANKING THE _ VOID," 1979, acrylic /) "GUMBY'S LESSON," 1980, graphite, on canvas, 27 X 42, Courtesy Hansen Fuller X wax and charcoal pencil on paper, 25Vs x Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco 36, Collection the Artist

"SEA MAN AWL WORKS," 1979, "FAMILY'S TRIP," 1980, charcoal, construction of mixed media, 52 X 103 x charcoal pencil and graphite on paper, 45th 48; watercolor and ink on paper, 30 x 22, x 56th, Collection The Artist Collection Barbara Morris, Miami "LETTERS FROM CAMP DIE BORN," "SUPER SANDALS FOR WILL 1980, watercolor and ink on paper, 30 x 22, ROGERS," 1979, construction of mixed Collection the Artist media, 35� x 18 x 18; watercolor and ink FOR THE U.S.A.," 1980, on paper, 22 x 30, Courtesy Allan Frumkin /A'''O.T.P.A.G.watercolor on 30 x Collection Gallery, New York paper, 22, the Artist "NOTHING TO BLAME," 1979, acrylic, charcoal on canvas, 89 X 169V2. "NOTHING TO BLAME, FEVER DREAMS FOR POCKO," drawing, ink on paper, 22 x 30. "NOTHING TO BLAME, OVERHEARD AT THE GAME," drawing, ink, acrylic on paper, 35� x 26. "NOTHING TO BLAME, THE WASTE THAT WOULDN'T GO AWAY," printed pamphlet, 11 x 8V2. "SKETCH FOR NOTHING TO BLAME," drawing, ink on paper, 7 x 10 Courtesy Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York. "EARTH STUDY," 1980, painting-acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 104 x 118�, Drawing-pencil, wax and color pencil, 3534 x 2514, Collection Byron Cohen, Kansas City

"FOOD DESCENDING THE STAIRCASE," 1980, charcoal on canvas, 92 x 118, Courtesy Hansen Fuller Goldeen Gallery, San Francisco

29 30 <, 1937 Born, Bedford, Indiana, 21 1970 Completion of film, "Man's October Nature" 1956 Graduates from Columbia Visiting artist, University of High School, Richland, Wisconsin, Madison Washington 1971 Exhibition, "William T. Wiley," 1959 Marries Dorothy Dowis University Art Museum, 1960 B.F.A., San Francisco Art Berkeley Institute 1972 Exhibits at "Documenta V," Birth of Son, Ethan Jacob Kassel, West Germany, and First One-Artist Show, San "Venice Biennale, " Italy Francisco Museum of Modern 1973 Exhibition, "William T. Art Wiley," Stedelijk van 1960-64 Exhibits at Staempfti Gallery, Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, New York The Netherlands 1962 M.F.A., San Francisco Art Stops teaching at Davis Institute 1976 Exhibition, "Projects," the Begins Teaching at the Museum of Modem Art, New University of California, York " Davis 1979 "Wiley Territory, 1963 Teaches Summer Session at Retrospective organized by San Francisco Art Institute Walker Art Center 1965 Birth of son, Zane James 1980 Travels to Australia Completion of film with Exhibition at Realities Robert Nelson, "The Great Galleries, Melborn, and the Blondino" Institute of Modern Art, 1966 Included in "The Whitney Brisbane, Queensland Annual," New York 1981 Performance Event, "Some Fall, teaches at San Francisco Inchaunted Evening, " Art Institute January 22, San Francisco 1967 Guest Instructor Positions: Museum of Modern Art University of California, "William T. Wiley," Berkeley; San Francisco Art University Fine Arts Institute; University of Galleries, Florida State Nevada, Reno; and University Washington State University, Pullman Group Exhibition, "Funk", University Art Museum, Berkeley 1968 Guest Instructor, School of Visual Arts, New York Visiting Artist, University of Colorado, Boulder Collaborates with composer, Steve Reich, on Theatre Event, "Over Evident Falls," at Hansen-Fuller Gallery, San Francisco, and at Sacramento State College 1968-79 Exhibits at Hansen Fuller Gallery, San Francisco, and Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York

31 One-Artist Exhibitions: Selected Group Exhibitions: Staempfli Gallery, New York 1960, 1962, Exhibition at Realities Galleries, Melborn "Young America Show", Whitney Museum 1964. and the Institute of Modem Art, of American Art, New York, 1960. San Francisco Museum of Art, San Brisbane, Queensland "American Exhibition", The Art Institute Francisco, 1960. "William T. Wiley," Florida State of Chicago, Chicago, 1961. Lanyon Gallery, Palo Alto, California, University, touring to University of Winter Invitational, California Palace of the 1965. South Florida, 1981 Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1961. Mills College, Oakland, California, 1967. Painting and Sculpture Show, Oakland Hansen Fuller Gallery, San Francisco, 1968, Museum of Art, Oakland, 1961. Invitational" 1969, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1978. "Painting , Grand Rapids Art Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York, 1968, Gallery, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1961. 1970, 1973, 1976. University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, Allan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago, 1969, 1961. Years of Area Art" 1972, 1974, 1979. "90 Bay , San Francisco Studio Marconi, Milan, Italy, 1971. Museum of Art, San Francisco, 1962. "William T. Wiley", exhibition touring to "Fifty California Artists", Whitney University of California 'at Berkeley, Museum of American Art, New York, University Art Museum; Chicago Art 1962. Institute, Chicago, Illinois; Corcoran "American Exhibition", The Art Institute Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1971-72. of Chicago, Chicago, 1962. James Manolides Gallery, Seattle, "Arts of San Francisco", San Francisco Washington, 1972. Museum of Art, San Francisco, 1963. Los American Des Margo Leavin Gallery, Angeles, 1972, "Contemporary Drawings" , . 1975, 1976. Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, Gallerie Odyssia, Rome, Italy, 1972. 1965. Gallerie Richard Froncke, Ghent, Belgium, "Whitney Annual", Whitney Museum of 1972. American Art, New York, 1966. "William T. Wiley", Stedelijk van "Current 'Irends in American Art", Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Westmoreland County Museum of Art, Netherlands, 1973. Greensburg, Pennsylvania, 1966. Utah Fine Arts Museum, University of "Painting and Sculpture Today", Herron Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1974. Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana, "Three One-Man Shows: William T. Wiley, 1966. Armando Morales" The "The Media of Art: of Dorothy Hood, , Now", University University of Texas at Austin, University Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, 1966. Art Museum, Austin, Texas, 1975. "Whitney Annual", Whitney Museum of Museum of Modern Art, "Projects," New American Art, New York, 1967. "American of the York, 1976. Sculpture Sixties" , Los Gallerie Paul Facchetti, Paris, France, 1977. Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles; "William T. Wiley: New Publications", Philadelphia Museum of Art, Landfall Press Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1967. 1977. "Funk", University of California at "Suite of Daze", Chicago Art Institute, Berkeley, University Art Museum, 1967. Book Show at Print Gallery, Chicago, "Pittsburgh International", Carnegie Illinois, 1977. Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Myra Morgan Gallery, Shawnee Mission, 1967. Kansas, 1978. "Toward a New Metaphysics", Allan Delahunty Gallery, Dallas, Texas, 1978. Frumkin Gallery, New York, 1967. "Wiley Territory", Walker Art Center, Dwan Gallery, New York, 1968. to Dallas Museum of Fine "Social Comment in America" Museum of touring Arts, , the Denver Art Museum, Des Moines Art Modem Art, New York, 1968. cente, San Francisco Museum of Modern "Whitney Annual", Whitney Museum of Art, 1979-80 American Art, New York, 1968.

32 Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery, University of California at Wellington-Ivest Collection, Boston, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, Massachusetts, 1968. California, 1971. "Spirit of the Comics", Institute _of "Sacramento Sampler", Crocker Art Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Museum, Sacramento, California; Sao Pennsylvania, 1969. Palo, Brazil, 1972. "New Methods and Materials" Museum of , "After Surrealism: Metaphors and Modem Art, New York, 1969. Similes", Ringling Museum, Sarasota, "Violence in Recent American Art", Florida, 1972. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, "Working in California", Albright-Knox Illinois, 1969. Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 1972. "National Drawing Exhibition", San "Painting and Sculpture Today", Francisco Museum of Art, San Indianapolis Museum of Art, Francisco, 1969. Indianapolis, Indiana, 1972. "Human Concern/Personal Torment", Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Whitney Museum of American Art, New Alabama, 1972. York, 1969. "Documenta V", Kassel, Germany, 1972. Drawing Exhibition, Fort Worth Art Studio Marconi, Cologne Art Fair, Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1969. Cologne, Germany, 1972. "University Annual Art Festival", Reno, "Venice Biennale," Venice, Italy, 1972. Nevada, 1969. "Twenty-five Years of American Painting: "When Art Becomes Form", Kunsthalle, 1948-1973", Des Moines Art Center, Berne, Switzerland, 1969. Des Moines, Iowa, 1973. "U.S.A. Groupe 69", Musee des "Extraordinary Realities", Whitney Beaux-Art, American Library, Brussells, Museum of American Art, New York, Belgium, 1969. 1973. "Symbol and Vision", Gallery Reese Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, Palley, San Francisco, 1970. Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1973. "Looking West", Joslyn Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Contemporary Art, Omaha, Nebraska, 1970. Baltimore, Maryland, 1973. "Centennial Exhibition" San Francisco Art , "Contemporary American Painting and San 1970. Institute, Francisco, Sculpture, 1974" , Krannert Art Museum, "Aspects du Racisme", Paris, France, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, 1974. 1970. "Painting and Sculpture Today, 1974", Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Indiana and Taft Museum of Art, Massachusetts, 1970. Cincinnati, Ohio, 1974. "Kompas IV Exhibition", Stedelijk van "Whitney Annual", Whitney Museum of Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The American Art, New York, 1974. Netherlands, 1970. "Surrealitat-Bildrealitat 1924-1974", "American Foundation Painting" , Maeght, Stadtische Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Paris, France, 1970. Dusseldorf, Germany, 1974. "American and "Biennial Exhibition" of Painting Sculpture, , Corcoran Gallery 1948-1969", University of Illinois, Art, Washington, D.C., 1975. Urbana, Illinois, 1971. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Los Angeles, "Art on Paper Invitational", Weatherspoon 1975. Art Gallery, University of North "Words and Images", University of

Carolina, Greensboro , North Carolina, California Art Museum, Santa Barbara,

. 1971. 1975. "Corcoran D. Biennial", Washington, C. , 1971. "Kent State Memorial Exhibition", Kent State, Ohio, 1971.

33 Periodicals and Newspapers:

" Albright, Thomas. "Maintaining Chandler, J.N. "Drawing Reconsidered," H.I.S. "Something for Booklovers, San Idiosyncracy," Art News, November Artscanada, October 1970, p. 31. Francisco Sunday Examiner and 1975, pp. 90, 92, 94. Clark, David. "William Wiley-New Chronicle, May 29, 1977, p. 4. Albright, Thomas. "They're Taking Art to Work," Artweek, October 4, 1975, Hughes, Robert. "Quirky Angler," Time the Street," San Francisco Chronicle, p. 1, 3. Magazine, January 17, 1971, p. 38. October 20, 1977, p. 46. Coffelt, Beth. "Beyond the Flesh, Beyond Hull, Roger, "Frisco's William Wiley Albright, Thomas. "Wiley: In Search of the Bone," San Francisco Sunday Teases Viewer with Varied Visual Puns, " New Territory," San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle (California The Sunday Oregonian, December 14, Chronicle, September 20, 1975, p. 33. Living magazine), May 29, 1977, 1975, p. 19. Allen, Jane and Guthrie, Derek. "New York pp. 20-22, 27. Johnson, F.H. "American Art of the 20th Formalism Bows to Hero Wiley," Coplans, John. "Angel-Hipsterism, Beat Century," Apollo (NS103), Fall 1976, Chicago Tribune, February, 1972. and Zen Versus New Materials," p. 134. Michael. "William T. A Andre, Wiley,"Arts, rtforum , September 1962, pp. 39-42. Kangas, Matthew, ""William T. Wiley; The June 1976, p. 29. Coplans, John and P. Leider, "West Coast Limits of Elusiveness," Vanguard, Andre, Michael. "William T. Wiley," Art Art: Three Images," Artforum, June December 1980/January 1981, pp. 8-12. News, Summer, 1976, pp. 173-174. 1966, pp. 21-25. Kramer, Hilton, "Wiley ofthe West: Dude Ashton, Dore. "Abstract Expressionism "Current Painting and Sculpture of the Bay Ranch Dada," The New York Times, Isn't Dead, "Studio, London, September, Area," Artforum, December 1964, Sunday, June 16, 1971, p. 19. " 1962. pp. 47-48. "Le Gallerie, II Milanese, October 10, Ashton, Dore. "Beyond Literalism But Not Davis, Douglas. "Funky Wiley," 1971, p. 57. " Beyond the Pale,"Arts, November 1968, Newsweek, December 13, 1971, p. 113. Leider, P. "California After the Figure, Art p.50. Davis, Douglas, "The Two Faces of in America, October 1963, p. 77. " Ashton, Dore. "Quid Est? .. . for an California," Newsweek, September 6, Lichtblau, C. "William T. Wiley," Arts, Answer Only Enigma," Arts, March 1976, p. 52-55. November 1970, p. 58. 1968, p. 48. Davis, R.G. "Ubu Roi," Artforum, Martin, Henry. "From Milan and Turin," Ashton, Dore. "William Wiley,"Arts and February 1964, pp. 36-39. Art International, December 20, 1971, Architecture, May 1964, p. 7. Derfner, P. "William T. Wiley at Frumkin pp.74-77. " Ashton, Dore. "William Wiley," Studio, and the Museum of Modem Art, Art in Masheck, J. "Snorting Out the Whitney July 1968, p. 37. America, November/December 1976, Annual,"Artforum, February 1971, p. 71. "Assemblage at the Frontier," Time, pp. 119-120. McCann, Cecile. "Probing the Western October 16, 1965. Dibble, George, "Words and Works: Gain Ethic," Artweek, May 15, 1971, pp. 1 Baker, Elizabeth and Joseph Raffael. from Both, "The Salt Lake Tribune, April and 8. "Way-Out West: Interviews with Four 28, 1974. McCann, Cecile. "William T. Wiley San Francisco Artists," Art News, Forman, Nessa. "San Francisco Style Self-Surveyed," Artweek, February 23, " Summer 1967, pp. 38-41. Survives Trek East, Philadelphia 1974, p. 1, 3. Baker, Kenneth. "A Funny Story," The Bulletin, November 14, 1971. McCann, Cecile. "William Wiley," Christian Science Monitor, July 23,1973. Frankenstein, Alfred. "More Dude-Ranch Artweek, November 18, 1972, pp. 1 " Ballatore, Sandy. "Directions in Drawing," Dada, San Francisco Chronicle, and 12. Artweek, April 10, 1976. November 11, 1972. McCann, Cecile. "William Wiley," Opus Barilli, Remato, "William Wiley," NAC Frankenstein, Alfred. "The Special Insight International, April 1973. Notizlario arte Contemporanea, Milano, of William T. Wiley, "The San Francisco McCann, Cecile. "William Wiley Since December 1971, pp. 16-17. Chronicle, This World Section, Sunday, '59,"Artweek, September 25, 1971, p. 1. Beck, James H. "William Wiley,"Art News, September 26, 1971, pp. 41-42. Mellow, James R. "Realist William T. " " May 1964, p. 18. French, P.D. "Painters Behind Painters. Wiley, The New York Times, October 11, A "Billboards with a Fine Touch," San rtforum , September 1967, pp. 67 -69. 1970. " Francisco Chronicle, November 14, Fried, Alexander. "An Artist of Too Many Monte, J. "Making it With Funk, A Summer 1977, p. 2. Words," San Francisco Examiner, rtforum , 1967, pp. 56-59. Bloomfield, Arthur. "Two Artists Dealing September 29, 1975, p. 25. Monte, J. "Polychrome Sculpture," A November 40-43. in Fantasy," San Francisco Examiner, Gibbon, J.F. "Sacramento," Art in rtforum , 1964, pp. "William "A November 2, 1972, p. 30. America, November 1971, pp. 78-83. Monte, J. Wiley, rtforum , May Chandler, John and Albie Muldavin. Gleuck, Grace. "The Slant Step," The New 1965, pp. 44-45. "Correspondences," Artscanada, York Times, Sunday, June 2, 1968. Monte, J. "William Wiley,"Artforum, May June-July 1971, pp. 44-61. G.R.B. "William Wiley, "Arts, May 1968, 1967, p. 69. p.59.

34 "New Talent U.S.A. "Art in Vol. , America, Seldis, Henry J. and William Wilson. "Art "William T. Wiley," Newsweek, January 12, 49, No.1, 1961, p. 24. Walk," Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1972. "Notes in William Wiley's Journal," Arte 1976. Wilson, W. "California Report," Domos Milano, October 2, 1972, p. 26. Seldis, Henry J. and William Wilson. "Art (No. 540), November 1974, p. 49. "November Street Show in San Francisco Walk," Los Angeles Times, October 15, "William Wiley,"ArtNews, January 1975, " . .. Seventeen Paintings on Billboards, 1976, p. 6. p.85. Sunset Magazine, November 1977, p. 23. Selz, Peter. "Six Artists in Search of San Zack, David. "West Coast: Bay Area Perazzi, Mario. "William Wiley," Coriere Francisco," Art News, Summer 1973, Gallery Innovations," Art and Artists, della Sera, Milano, Italy, October 19, pp. 34-37. January 1971, p. 60. 1971. Shere, Charles. "Wiley Sculpture Show in Zickerman, Lynne. "In Art with Bill Perreault, John. "Beyond Literalism, hArt S.P. Gallery," Oakland Tribune, (Art Wiley," The Daily Californian Arts International, January 1969, p. 37. Notes Section), February 24, 1974, p. 30. Magazine, April 19, 1974, p. 16. " Perreault, John. "Eccentrics," The Village Stewart Albert, "Mr. Unatural, Images Voice, October 15, 1970. and Issues, Spring 1981. Perreault, John. "Metaphysical Funk Stiles, Knute. "Small Format Paintings," Art A Monk," News, May 1968, rtforum , January 1964, p. 9. 52-53. "William A pp. Stiles, Knute, Wiley," rtforum , Perreault, John. "Toward a New December 1966, p. 65. " Metaphysics, The Village Voice, Swenson, G.R. "William Wiley, "Art News, September 1967, New York. September 1962, p. 55. Pincus-Witten, R. "William Wiley," "The Individualists, " Time, September 12, A rtforum , December 1967, p. 56. 1960, p. 88. Plagens, Peter. "Abstract Painting in "The New New Criticism," Time, May 31, California, "Studio, August 1974, 1968, pp. 46, 49. pp. 35-37. Tooker, Dan. "How to Chart a Course," Plagens, Peter. "Exhibition in Los Artscanada, Spring 1974, pp. 82-85. Angeles," Artforum, February 1970, "Trends," Time, February 28, 1969, p.79. pp. 68-73. "William A " Plagens, Peter. Wiley," rtforum , Trini, Tommaso, "William Wiley, Domus September 1974, p. 87. 504, November 1971, p. 51. " Polley, Elizabeth M. "Bay Area Group, Wasserman, Emily, "William T. Wiley and Artforum, April 1963, pp. 13-14. William Allan: Meditating at Fort " Polley, Elizabeth M. "William Wiley," Prank, Artforum, December 1970, Artforum, December 1965, p. 50. pp.62-67. Ratcliff, Carter. "On Contemporary Wellish, M. "Material Extension in New A Primitives," rtforum , November, 1975, Sculpture," Arts, Summer 1971, p. 44. pp. 58-59. Wenger, Leslie. "William T. Wiley: Fall "Prince of Wizdumb " Raymond, Herbert. , Fashions," Current, October/November Art and Artists, November 1973, 1975, pp. 14-18,54-57. pp.24-27. "William Wiley, "Artforum, Summer 1974, Raynor, V. "William Wiley," Arts, p.87. 46. "William A September 1962, p. Wiley," rtforum , Summer 1973, Richardson, Brenda. "Curator Replies to p.76. " Art Critic, San Francisco Chronicle, "William T. Wiley, "Art News, November May 25, 1971, p. 36. 1970, p. 71. Schulze, Franz. "William T. Wiley: He May "William T. Wiley," Art News, Summer Be A Genius," Chicago Daily News, 1973, p. 94. January 22, 1972. "William Wiley," Art News, May 1974, Schulze, Franz. "Wiley a Master at 37," p.48. ChicagoDailyNews, November 9, 1974. "William Wiley, "GO� (No. 107), March Seldis, Henry and William Wilson, 1972, p. 323. " "Artwalk, Los Angeles Times, "William T. Wiley, MOMA?" Artforum, December 12, 1969, p. 21. Summer 1976, 66-67.

35 Books and Exhibition Catalogues:

" " "American Art: Third Quarter Century, "William T. Wiley, Hansen Fuller Gallery, Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, November 1972 (exhibition dates Washington, 1973 October 31-November 25, 1972) Beal, Graham W. J. and John Perreault, Wiley Territory, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1979 Coffelt, Beth, "Bill, Bob, Bill, Bill," Department of the Interior, United States Government, Centre Cultural Americain (Group exhibition: Wiley, exhibition: Wiley, Hudson, Geis, Allan) traveling exhibition, November 1976 Dahlen, Beverly. "Out of the Third," MOMA Press, San Francisco, 1974, Cover Drawings by William T. Wiley "Documenta 5," Kassel, Germany, 1972 "Eyes and Ears Artboard Gallery," Catalogue, November 1977 Godine, David. (Publisher/Coordinator), 200 lears ofAmerican Sculpture Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, 1976 "Image, Color, and Form," The Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, 1975 Leering, J. Introduction to William T. Wiley Retrospective, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 1973 "National Print Invitational Exhibition

" 1974, California State University, Sacramento and Artists Contemporary Gallery (Group Exhibition of Prints of the '70s) "Painting and Sculpture in the Modem Era, " San Francisco Museum of Modem ArtINational Collection of Fine Art, 1976 Plagens, Peter. Sunshine Muse. Praeger Publishers, Inc., New York, New York, 1974. Richardson, Brenda. "I Am My Own Enigma," Introduction for Wizdumb catalogue, University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1971 Stewart Albert, "Wil�iam T. Wiley," University Fine Arts Galleries, Tallahassee, 1981 "Suite of Daze," Landfall Press, Inc. "When Attitudes Become Form" Kunsthalle, Bern, Switzerland, 1969 " "William T. Wiley, Allan Frumkin Gallery, Illinois Chicago, , November, 1974 "William T. Wiley," Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York, New York, 1975

36 Florida State University University Fine Arts Galleries Committee Administration Galleries/Staff

Dubose Ausley, Chairman, Board of Albert Stewart, Director Joan Ballou Regents Allys Palladino-Craig Trevor Bell Bernard F. Sliger, President Bill Celander, Technical Assistant Linda Bradley Patrick W. Hogan, Acting Vice President for Richard Farina Linda Davis University Relations Wanda Ford William Harper

B . J. Hodge, Vice President for Phillip Fusca Peter Koenig Administrative Affairs Zola Garrick Penelope E. Mason Bobby Leach, Vice President for Student Richard Hubbard, Preparator/Installation Jim Roche Affairs Design William Walmsley Jerry L. Draper, Dean, School of Visual Janet Mauney, Secretary-Publicity Arts Douglas Newton, Technical Assistant Susan Parks, Secretary Sharon Collins, Registrar Yvonne Thomas

Copyright 1981 by the University Fine Arts Galleries. Library of Congress Catalog

WILLIAM T. WILEY

Stewart, Albert Tallahassee, Florida State University University Fine Arts Galleries 81-66250

Photo Credits: Lee Fatheree, Tom Arndt, Glenn Halvorson, Robert Frumkin Courtesy: The Walker Art Center Allan Frumkin Gallery San Francisco Museum of Modem Art Hansen Fuller Goldeen Gallery Des Moines Art Center Typesetting: TImes Roman, 9 point RapidoGraphics, Inc. Tallahassee, Florida

This exhibition was made possible through the generous assistance of the Fine Arts Council of Florida, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Department of State and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal agency. This program prohibits discrimination on the grounds of race, color, national origin, sex, handicap or age in accordance with federal law.

Supported in part by the Friends of the Galleries

Organized by University Fine Arts Galleries Albert Stewart, Curator