Bill Beckley Biography
An important American contemporary artist, Bill Beckley is associated with various recent art movements, such as STORY ART, CONCEPTUALISM and PHOTO- NARRATIVE ART.
He uses large photographic images and text in a more accessible and amusing context than his conceptual counterparts who are more concerned with the philosophical use of language and image. Beckley has succeeded by making his personal iconography both interesting and mysterious. Bill Beckley's magic is in this dreamy maze of fact and fantasy. His inquiry into romanticism turn our senses to a higher sphere of thought and feeling. Beckley's artworks include a highly acute sensitivity that allows the viewer to penetrate and uncover the inverted sensual references, distortions and fallacies that are a synthesis and a barometer for our notions of romance. Using this magical osmosis, Beckley can charge these rather subtle pieces with an electric current of psychic energy. He can convey the whisper of a dream, a scrap of a letter, a recollection of an incomplete poem that vaporizes into the recesses of the senses. Art has always been a testing ground for new ideas and the most renowned artists have always been those who by resolving current contemporary visual problems successfully have developed new references in art.
Beckley understands art history and knows that all problems relating to space, color and form have been resolved. He has combined new and old vocabulary references to create an art form which is peculiarly his own. His work has the magnetic majesty that can split open the secrets of a suspended moment in time. One always comes away from a Beckley painting bewildered, enriched and a little wiser.
Bill Beckley's work has been included in the Whitney Museum of American Art 1979 Biennial, an invitational survey of the most important and provocative American paintings done over the past two years.
A selected list of his EXHIBITIONS is as follows:
1979: - Nigel Greenwood, London, England
Hans Mayer, Denise Rene, Dusseldorf, Germany - 1978: - Gallery 67, Bologna, Italy - Hans Mayer, Denise Rene Gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany - Art in Progress, Munich Museum of Modern Art, Germany
Verd Munru, Hamburg, Germany - * 1977 - Lucio Ameho, Naples, Italy
Daniel Templon, Paris, France - * 1976: - D'Alessandro-Ferranti, Rome, Italy
John Gibson Gallery, New York - * 1975: - Yvon Lambert, Paris, France - Patrick Verselst/Marc Poitier dit Caulier, Antwerp, Belgium - Performance, Steinway Hall, NY
Francoise Lambert, Milan, Italy - * 1973: - John Gibson Gallery, New York
Konrad Risher, Dusseldorf, Germany - * 1979: - Whitney Museum Biennial, NY - "Acquisition of the 70's", Whitney Museum, New York - Story Art, Bonn, Germany
Story Art, Heidelberg, Germany - * 1977: - "Documenta", Kassel, Germany - "Photographic Works", Gallery Nancy Gillespie, Elizabeth deLaage, Paris, France - "Three Artists Using the Photograph", Alberta College of Art Gallery, Calgary, Canada - "American Art in Belgium", Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels - "Narrative Art", organized by Paul Schimmel, Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston - "The Dada/Surrealist Heritage", Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
"New Art for Jimmy Carter", Georgia Art Museum, Athens, GA - His art can also be found at the following PUBLIC COLLECTIONS and MUSEUMS:
Museum of Modern Art, NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
Kunst Museum, Basel, Switzerland
Kreifeld Museum, Dusseldorf, Germany Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England
