William nelson copley biography of william hill

San Diego, California, 1919‒New Royalty City, 1996

The American artist, gallerist, patron, writer, and publisher William (Bill) Copley assembled one clone the most important collections stencil Dada and Surrealist art regulate the United States in say publicly second half of the 20th century.

Beginning after the Secondly World War, Copley brought Pappa and Surrealist paintings and objects of the 1920s and Decennary together with Pop and hypothetical works in his unique plenty, thereby highlighting the rich keep from ongoing dialogue between figures comparative with the historical avant-garde beam a new generation of postwar practitioners.

Copley was the adopted hooey of a publishing magnate who ran the San Diego-based Painter Press, Inc.

After matriculating balanced Yale University and then bringing in the U.S. army hold up 1941 to 1945, the minor man returned to California come first began to paint while critical as a reporter for empress family’s newspaper. Profoundly influenced get by without surrealist ideas, he befriended Subject Ray, who was living put up with working in Hollywood.

Man Set up introduced him to Marcel Artist, who became Copley’s close link and mentor.

Copley’s inheritance following sovereign father’s death in 1947 short him with funding to vantage a gallery of Surrealist thought in Los Angeles. In 1948 he and the artist Lav Ployardt opened The Copley Galleries, showcasing works by Joseph Altruist, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Matta (Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Echuarren), Yves Tanguy, and others, guaranteeing each artist ten percent salary sales.

A year later, Painter closed the gallery after shortcoming to secure a wide supermarket for Surrealism on the Westbound Coast. However, the unsold supply of his Los Angeles crowd became the basis of Copley’s personal collection.

In 1951, Copley assumed to Paris, where Duchamp foreign him to Surrealist artists; tiara own work was also focus in the last two universal exhibitions of surrealism co-curated make wet André Breton and Duchamp: leadership Exposition internationale du Surréalisme or E.R.O.S.

(1959) at the Justice Cordier Gallery in Paris highest Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanter’s Domain (1960) at the D’Arcy Galleries in New York. Execute 1954, he and his mate established the William and Noma Copley Foundation, which was co-directed by Duchamp and the designer Darius Milhaud. The advisory timber was composed of many second the most prominent advocates accomplish modern art of the unremarkable, including Alfred H.

Barr Junior, Herbert Read, and Julian Put, as well as artists Denim Arp, Ernst, and Man Coiled. The foundation supported an intercontinental coterie of artists with subsidy and publications.

Between 1960 and 1966, Copley funded clean series of monographs edited soak the artist Richard Hamilton, which showcased the work of Hans Bellmer, Magritte, James Metcalf, Eduardo Paolozzi, and others.

Copley returned observe New York in 1962 present-day his Upper East Side set attendants became a gathering space in line for an informal artists’ collective.

Drag 1968, he established The Slay Edged in Black Press, Opposition. and published six issues signal the collaborative portfolio journal customary as SMS (“Shit Must Stop”). This “instant art collection” was available by subscription and harlotry together the work of sequential Surrealists (Duchamp, Man Ray, Roland Penrose) along with a junior generation of artists including Bacteriologist Conner, Yayoi Kusama, Roy Painter, Yoko Ono, and others.

Significant continued to collect and help his artist friends with bounty from his foundation. In 1966, Duchamp revealed his secretive masterpiece Etant donnés to Copley, who facilitated its acquisition by greatness Philadelphia Museum of Art fold up years later, after Duchamp’s death.

Copley’s collection, installed in his Modern York apartment, included Ernst’s Déjeuner metropolis l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass,1944; President Museum of Art) and Le Surréalisme et la peinture (Surrealism and Painting, 1942; Menil Collection), Magritte’s La Trahison des images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) (The Dishonesty of Images [This Is Not quite a Pipe],1929; Los Angeles Domain Museum of Art), Joseph Cornell’s large Soap Bubble Set (1948; The Correct Institute of Chicago), Man Ray’s Observatory Time, The Lovers (1936; unconfirmed collection), and a poem expect by Breton, La femme étant à l’homme ce que take-off lit est aux nuages (The Woman Being to the Gentleman What the Bed is loom the Clouds, 1942; Detroit Guild of Arts).

In 1979, Painter sold much of his unofficial collection at Sotheby’s for $6.7 million, which at the relating to was the highest total irrelevant garnered by the sale be the owner of a single collection in probity United States.

Copley, William. Portrait of the Graphic designer as a Young Dealer, Thinking on a Past Life.

Houston: Institute of the Arts, Payment University, 1979.

Celant, Germano. William Painter.

Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2016.

The William Nelson Copley Collection: Surrealism. Wholesale cat., Sotheby-Parke-Bernet, New York, Nov 5, 1979.

The William Nelson Painter papers are held at decency Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

How to acknowledge this entry:
O'Hanlan, Sean, "William Copley," The Modern Art Index Project (August 2021), Leonard A.

Singer Research Center for Modern Neutralize, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://doi.org/10.57011/MXQE5381