William N. Copley - Hardcover

Allen, Gwen; Franklin, Paul; Gingeras, Alison; Griffin, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8887029644 ISBN 13: 9788887029642

Publisher: Fondazione Prada, 2016

William N. Copley (1919–96) was a multifaceted American artist and art-world catalyst. Creator of madcap narrative paintings, drawings and installations, Copley was a unique figure in postwar art history well known for his humorous and sarcastic imagery. Known by his nom de plume CPLY, he was a self-taught artist pushing the limits of art-world decorum, as well as a collector, gallerist and connector of some of the most important artists of the 20th century, in particular European Surrealists and Dadaists such as Max Ernst, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, and American Pop artists. William N. Copley assembles works from all phases of the artist’s creation, from the Parisian years to the last period spent mostly in solitude in his home in Sugarloaf Key, Florida, tracing the development of his painterly style and continual experiments with line, color, pattern and allegory. In Paris in the early 1950s, Copley developed a unique, ribald figurative style that bucked prevailing trends toward abstraction, taking inspiration from Surrealist painting, American, cartoon and silent-movie imagery. Throughout his career, he repeatedly returned to subjects like nudes, cars and nationalism; later works reveal his abiding interest in political and psychosexual themes, surrealist visual punning and vaudevillian Americana, making Copley a link between European Surrealist and American Pop circles. Featuring approximately 250 paintings and works on paper, the volume accompanies the first comprehensive presentation of the artist’s work in an American museum, also scheduled to travel to Italy.

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About the Author:

Germano Celant is Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim Museum. He has published extensively on Robert Mapplethorpe and the rich art historical past referenced in the photographeris work.

"Toby Kamps is curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. His prior publications include Small Worlds: Dioramas in Contemporary Art, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and 20th Century Mexican Art, and Lateral Thinking: Art of the 1990s."

Review:

Beautiful use of newsprinted, uncoated papers, and a surprisingly animated grid make this a perfect package. The type bleeding on the spine is icing on the cake! (50 Covers of 2016) (Jessica Helfand AIGA Design Archives)

William N. Copley (1919-96) is among the 20th-century outliers ― philanthropist, newspaper reporter, publisher, art dealer, writer, peripatetic lover of women, connoisseur of the high life, generous friend of artists (especially Surrealists) and eccentric folk-Pop painter. All of this is captured in William N. Copley, a lavish catalog for a retrospective at the Prada Foundation in Milan and seen at the Menil Collection in Houston earlier this year. Most seductive are the ribald, cartoonish, exquisitely colored paintings depicting shenanigans that frequently include women in bloomers, or less. (Roberta Smith The New York Times)

An American retrospective of Copley’s work seem not only relevant, but inevitable... Kamp’s courageous and important survey illuminates both the consistency and the sophistication of Copley’s vision and most importantly its truthfulness to itself. (Anne Doran ARTnews)

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