Artfacts.Net: Bill Beckley

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Bill Beckley (1946, US)

Artist Rank (2007): 6866 –

Most exhibitions in:
USA	4

Most exhibitions with:
Name	Rank	№
Dennis A. Oppenheim	121	4
Günter Brus	219	3
Peter Hutchinson	2318	3
Vito Acconci	61	3
Joseph Beuys	6	3

Works of art

"O.T.", 127 x 75 cm, 99,5 x 74,8 cm, 199 x 75 cm. Fotografy, writing on paper, Edition of 3. Exhibition: documenta VI, Kassel, 24.06. - 02.10.

1977

Fesel Modern Art

Biography

1946
Born in Hamburg, PA (US)

BFA Kutztown State University, PA

MFA Tyler School of Art, Temple University

1979
National Endowment for the Arts

1986
New York Council of the Arts

1997
Pollack-Krasner Grant

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.

Exhibitions – Selection
2000
Selected works 1970-1999, John Gibson Gallery, New York (solo)
Portnoy and Marianne Vitale, White Box Gallery, NY
Narrative, Studio G7, Bologna
Sammlung Hoffman, Berlin
Daimler-Benz collection, Berlin

1999
Sammlung Falckenberg Museum de bildenden Kunst, Leipzig
17 Contemporary Artists from America, Italy and Mexico, The Menile Collection, TX

Collection:
Museum of Modern Art, NY
The Guggenheim Museum, NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, NY

Public exhibitions 12