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Moser on William Wiley.Pdf i:: I IN 1968 W ILLI AM T. WILEY FOUND HIMSELF AT a crossroads in his young ca reer. From the What's It beginning, hi s work had been well received. His art was included in group exhibitions in Cali forni a, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, All Mean? and New York. Prominent publica tions took n ote. Less t h an a d ecad e aft er com .p le t in g art school , Wiley had a teaching job he enj oyed, and his work was nati onall y recogni zed. What more could a yo ung artist want? Wiley, however, was not sa ti sfi ed. A year Joann Moser earli er, with hi s wife and two sons, he had spent several months traveli ng around Europe, looking at art. In the fall , be moved with his fa mi ly to the small town of Ringwood, New Jersey, and spent much of his time visiting m u­ seums and galleries in New Yo rk City. Wiley recalled: "A whole lot of material and infor­ mation had sifted ben;veen me and makin g art. That winter in New Jersey I sort of hacked back to the source .. I'd go to New York and look at a lot of art. If it made sense to me, okay. If not, okay." 1 Wil ey even had the satisfac­ ti on of seeing one of hi s paintings shown in the I967 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Painting at the Whitney M useum and pur­ chased by the m useum. Sti ll , for a whi le he made no arc. H e lost confiden ce in his a bili ty as a n a rtist and experienced what New York art critic John Perreault characterized, after St. John of the Cross, as a "kind of dark night of the soul. " In an interview Wiley confided in him: "That was the longest period I spent withom working. Five, six months. That was the firs t time I thought maybe I'm not supposed to be an artist. It was sure bleak at that point. I think it's in there, but it won't come out. Maybe I've got to give up, just stop. It's okay. Now what's going to happen? Well , I still have my teaching job. I'll go back During the next few months, after this break­ and hang on until they sling me out. " 2 through, he went on to crea te a new and signifi­ Working in a modest-sized studio and with cant body of work in various media, but water­ limited materials, Wiley began making clear, color would remain especially important to him. delicate watercolors with a box of paints he Posing the question, "What's It All Mean,' had purcha ed in England. He could focus his in A Sign from the Country Painter (fi g. r), attention on a ma ll area, rather than on the which he created after hi s crisis while still large spaces of abstract expressionist painting living in New Jersey, he presciently acknowl­ or monumental minimali st scuJpture in vogue at edged the public response to much of his work the time. He relied on his fluent drawing ski ll s throughout his long career. Characterized by and could complete a work relatively quickly. contradictions, puns, enigmatic texts, curi- Watercolors were not in fas hi on in the con­ ous juxtapositions, and references as varied as temporary art world, so he could do whatever current events, personal experiences, cartoons, he wanted without the pressure of comparison. a nd moral dil emmas, his art simultaneously The experience was liberati ng. Wiley recollected: intrigued and fr ustrated viewers who could not "When I fina ll y did get back to work, I just re­ read il y understand hi imagery. FIG. 1 all y sim plified the whole problem of making art. After Wi ley returned to California in I kind of let go of any expectations or hopes or 1968, he continued to exhibit acros the A Sign from the Country Painter thoughts of success. I just went back to the idea country and achi eved national recognition 1968 wooden artist's palette of making art because it was something I loved for his distinctive work. By the late r97os, with acrylic, plastic doing, and that was enough. And at that point however, his reputation became more regional. lellers, and pa intbrush, 18¾ x 21½in. I connected with Even today he is considered one of the lead- Private Co llection watercolor. " 3 ing California artists of his generation. His importance and influence, however, extend well beyond the West Coast. Over the s past fifty years, Wiley bas crea ted a / body of work that anticipated such important developments as instal­ lation art, audi ence participation, a revival of interest in drawing, as well as the use of humor and a broader audience. --~ --;'J IHI 11 I STUDENT YEARS AND EARLY WORK William Wiley was born in Bedford, Indiana, in stimulating urban environment. "I was just 1937, and li ved with his family in small towns in in heaven. I loved the city and the changing Texas and Washington during his early years. He atmospheres all the time-rain and fog and attended hi gh school in Rich.land, Washington. sunshine, the bay, and the ocean. School was Interested in drawing, he was encouraged by his exciting-big canvases and people painting art teacher, James McGrath, w hom he considers with oil , lots of oil paint."6 one of bis most important influ ences. McGrath Abstract expressioni sm and Bay Area took hi m to Seattle to meet Mark Tobey, Sam fig urative painting dominated the teaching at Francis, and Morris Graves and see their work. the San Francisco An Institute. Clyfford Still 's They also visited the Asian collection at the formalist approach to abstract expressionism Seattle Art Museum. In art classes the students remained a strong influence at the Art Institu te, often used watercolor, inspired by Tobey and even after he left the school for New York in Graves. McGrath in stilled in these youn g art 1950. Surrealism was a strong secondary inter­ students an attitude of openness about how est among many San Francisco artists, since the art co uJ d be made. He encouraged experiments work of Giorgio di Chirico had been shown at with various materials, techniques, and tools and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor introduced students to poetry and music. 4 in 1931, and work by Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, McGrath took a special interest not only in Joan M iro, and Gordon Onslow-Ford was Wiley but also in his two friends Robert Hudson shown later in California. What appea led to and William Allan and helped them obtain the Bay Area artists was not the ideology and scholarships to the San Francisco Art Institute literary rhetoric of European surrea lism, but (then the California School of Fine Arts). When the freedom of expression promoted by au­ Wiley faced a crisis of confidence, his early expe­ tomatism and the use of figurative imagery to rience with McGrath helped him find a path. explore aspects of myth and psychology. 7 Even Wiley began to atten d the San Francisco more important for Wiley's subsequent practice Art Institute in the fa ll of 1956. He studied with was the use of words as images by Anderson, Elmer Bischoff, Frank Lobdell, Ralph Du Casse, Martin, and several other artists at the school, Nathan Oliveira, and Ralph Putzker, but he as well as th eir irreverent attitudes and per­ had informal contact with other teachers, such sonal idiosyncrasies. as Richard Diebenkorn, Jack Jefferson, James Outside school, he saw the work of Bruce Weeks, Fred Martin, and Jeremy Anderson. Connor, Jay Defeo, Wa lly Hedrick, Wa llace Equall y important for him were fe llow students Berman, and Jess (Collins), part of the first Manuel Neri, Joan Brown, Alvin Light, and Bill generation of California assemblage artists who Geis. Allan had preceded Wiley by a year, and assa ulted the boundaries between one art fo rm Hudson joined them the fo llowing year, cement­ and another, between high art and the detritus ing a friendship among the three that has lasted of life and popular culture. Their multimedia to this day. 5 work incorporated found objects and debris Also critical for Wiley was the move to and introduced an element of social protest. San San Francisco, his first experience li ving in a Francisco was the center for artists, writers, and 17 musicians of the Beat movement, whose poetry, work of Oliveira, one of the leading artists films, and performances intrigued the young, Bay Area figurative movement, an outgrow impressionable Wiley. the abstract expressionist tradition. In an ( Wiley bad ready acces to art magazines painting, Flag Song (fig. 2), Wiley incorpoi and books on Zen Buddhism. To supplement his references to everyday life and popular cul scholarship from the Art Institute he worked His choice of color and the red-and-white at the Duncan Vail Art Supply score in San striped motif suggests an American fl ag. A Francisco. Nearby was Paul Eider's bookstore, the sensational success of Jasper Johns's fin which made available the latest art magazines, exhibition at the Leo Costelli Gallery in I '. through which Wiley became familiar with the Wiley saw numerous examples in art mag work of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, of Johns's use of flags, targets, and alphab and ocher East Coast artists long before he saw his early paintings.
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