Oral History Interview with William T. Wiley, 1997 October 8-November 20

Oral history interview with William T. Wiley, 1997 October 8-November 20 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Interview PAUL KARLSTROM: Smithsonian Institution, an interview with William T. Wiley, at his studio in Woodacre, California, north of San Francisco. The date is October 8, 1997. This is the first session in what I hope will be a somewhat extensive series. The interviewer for the archives is Paul Karlstrom. Okay, here we go, Bill. I've been looking forward to this interview for quite a long time, ever since we met back in, it was the mid-seventies, as a matter of fact. At that time, in fact, I visited right here in this studio. We talked about your papers and talked about sometime doing an interview, but for one reason or another, it didn't happen. Well, the advantage to that, as I mentioned earlier, is that a lot has transpired since then, which means we have a lot more to talk about. Anyway, we can't go backwards, and here we are. I wanted to start out by setting the stage for this interview. As I mentioned, Archive's [of American Art] interviews are comprehensive and tend to move along sort of biographical, chronological structure, at least it gives something to follow through. But what I would like to do first of all, just very briefly, is kind of set the stage, and by way of an observation that I would like to make, which is also, I think, a compliment. I remember one very early on, I think, it was in the mid to late seventies when I was thinking about there was a possibility of doing an interview with you, and even at one point we talked a little bit about a possible article, and it never came to pass. But it got me thinking at that time about you and how I would interview, and what I needed to try to ferret out, what I needed to discover. One of the things that struck me, and I still feel this way, is that despite the fact that in some ways your work seems to be iconoclastic, and has been described as coming out of Marcel Duchamp, and to have a sort of a Dada aroma to it, or a Dada interest and an interest in popular culture, certainly, looking even at the illustration in a comic book, and so forth, and this kind of humor. These are all observations that people have made, and it's a way of looking at your work that seems to disconnect it from a tradition, from art history. What I came to understand was that I personally didn't find it easy to understand your art, despite its, in some ways, accessibility and attractiveness. It was fun. I couldn't read it. And I think that that's an important word to introduce right off the bat, because you certainly were one of the artists who early on incorporated language, words into your imagery. It became like a fusion of words and puns and sayings with the images. I wasn't always sure I was getting it. What this made me realize is that you're a very complex person, and I think your art is very complex. This is just an observation I want to make to get us into our interview. Also, I wanted to mention this catalog for a little exhibition that was done at the [M.H.] de Young [Memorial] Museum. It was called "William T. Wiley: Nothing Lost From The Original." "William T. Wiley Looks At Art History." It was in 1996, a little over a year ago, a year and a half ago, an exhibition I saw. What was striking about it, and what I think may have surprised some people who knew something about your work, but maybe not in depth, was an obvious awareness of, and respect for, on your part, for art history, and for what we call the Old Masters, that, apparently, you saw yourself as connected to these traditions. I'd like to start out with that. Maybe you want to have something to say about that show and what it meant, and maybe about this observation that I just made--Bill Wiley and art history. WILLIAM WILEY: Well, the first thing that comes to mind is just wanting to keep the experience, or the image, or the relationship to art, me, and life in some accessible tangible media. So, just common everyday materials, art that's been art for a long time. I wanted to work somehow and stay in that framework more so than into twentieth century televised digital framework. But as it turns out, you know, whether you enter into it or not consciously, you're already involved in it. But one connection--a little bit like Wendell Barry's essay of why he wasn't going to buy a computer. It has something to do with that, wherein he says the reason he won't buy a computer is it, first of all, would have to be an improvement on the pencil, which he doesn't think it is. But the most important reason, he would have to be able to fix it himself. So it's a kind of wanting to keep in touch with something that doesn't have anything to do with-- PK: Technology. WW: --technology, I guess. PK: Vulgarity in that sense. Technological vulgarity. WW: I don't know if that's exactly. Maybe it's just wanting to stay in touch with something on some real intimate level that doesn't require any form of technology in some ways, not to lose some contact with whatever human beings find about that kind of exploration that's vital to being here from when we were first here. Charcoal and stuff, from the cave. Just wanting some kind of--there's so many things that want to be between you and that in some ways, I think, culturally and society things. So, the other part, as far the art history part, is, I guess sometimes people talk to me about it in terms of being eclectic and no one particular recognizable style evolving, which I thought for a long time should happen, and I still sometimes wish it would. PK: You mean for you in your work. WW: Yes. Sometimes I think of it in terms of language. It's like there are all these languages available, especially in terms of image. Why confine yourself to only English? There's all these languages and possibilities and concepts to speak or communicate with them. So any of those that I'm interested in to be available to me, and also want it to be available and some low technical, quickly adaptable means. And in another sense, just in terms of what the work's about--I was thinking about this. Well, in some ways, I know I've used this metaphor before. I'm just a landscape painter. I look out the window and I see what's going on, and I paint it. While I'm painting it, I also write thoughts about what I see going on out there. The imagery I find from various sources sometimes just kind of filtered through me and other artists, but sometimes more directly taken from a specific source, because I feel the imagery will convey what it is. I'm being a little bit like the Afterburner show, which got me off into really literally kind of translating from [Hieronymus] Bosch and [Pieter] Bruegel] who have been inspirational for me. I've just always been attracted to those people that are in the catalog there for all the various reasons. So I also see them as a little bit like helpers that also come to you at different times when you're struggling to be an artist, make images, stay in touch with that that I'm talking about, that various artists from the past, and sometimes more in the peer group will occur or give me an idea, a bridge, something. So I think a lot of the work is about homaging those connections, since we're all kind of basically involved in the same thing, putting up a blank of some kind and letting it or filling it in when things happen at that point. PK: It seems to me, looking through this very nice little catalog, that you are especially attracted, have been especially attracted, to Bosch and Bruegel. I'm curious to know why that's so. What is it about them, or about the images, about the compositions, maybe the stories that they're telling, that resonates for you, in which you feel somehow connected? WW: Gee, just some of the images in there are so potent, powerful. And I think there's some part of my person that is a recycled medieval--some connection with medieval art for a long time, just when I first saw it. I think it also has to do with--well, in this particular case, I mean, using the burning village after Bosch, just to mention a few. I never thought--I mean, I've been attracted to imagery and occasionally I've drawn from it, but I never thought I'd be painting these paintings.

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