“My life is a quest for the ridiculous image. The visual pun is the golden nugget that we seek.”
—William N. Copley
Copley’s quest for visual absurdity is exemplified in his painting Do You, executed in 1981 at the height of his career. A priest, clad in black, occupies the center of the work; with his back to the viewer, he holds up a prosaic placard from which the work takes its title.
Standing before him to his left and right are the bride and groom, depicted in Copley’s “unrepentantly salacious” Surrealist-influenced style.i Painted using the artist’s signature motifs — strong lines, bold color, and the absence of physical features — Copley renders every subject he paints an everyman. In the case of Do You, the trio of figures clumsily huddled in the center of a barren room makes apparent the lack of audience to this wedding – leaving only the viewer to bear witness to the bizarre ceremony.
“By mixing writing and painting he was again stressing that his practice was one of ‘thinking in images’ and appeared oriented toward emphasizing the skin of the painting without forgetting its poetic, inner content.”
—Germano Celant
Do You’s usage of visual storytelling evidences the influence of the artist’s brother-in-law John Ployardt, an animator at Disney, on Copley’s practice. It was Ployardt who introduced Copley to the comic strip, and the power of the satirical and the parodistic in drawing. Do You finds multivalence in the various implications the phrase holds. These two words are likely meant to imply the traditional vows recited in wedding ceremonies. By severing the vow to only the opening words, however, Copley seems to poke fun at the institution of marriage; “Do You” becomes a statement in and of itself.
A detail of the present work.
Evident in his brazen depiction of the bride in this painting, Copley’s relationship with women throughout his life was a fraught one. “They are central to every phase of his career — usually faceless, nameless, and almost always nude,” the artist’s daughter, Clare Copley, describes. “The impossibility of knowing them is apparent in every painting … The overwhelming impression was that no one cares about these women, except him.”ii
Having been given up at birth for adoption, and subsequently attending all-male educational institutions before being drafted in the Second World War, it becomes obvious that the artist had limited exposure to women throughout his life. Yet, what Copley did with his art was to shamelessly externalize his anxieties and desires surrounding women. This brash and discomfiting aspect of his work largely explains the “scanty and sporadic attention” that his work received throughout his career.iii
Best known as the self-trained painter, gallerist, and collector who served as a link between European Surrealism and American Pop Art, Copley credited Surrealism for his artistic epiphany, describing how “Surrealism made everything understandable.” As Copley wrote in his memoir:
“As I understood it, there were two aspects of reality: the public or social one that... we must communicate with; and the private reality that is the reality to us alone, which needs poetry and above all metaphor to communicate.” iv
Do You is a detached depiction of a joyous moment, and a revelation of Copley’s subconscious, or ‘private reality’. While it depicts a wedding on one level, it also serves to make visible Copley’s own views on marriage. In September of 1980, Copley wed Marjorie Annapav — a former brothel worker who married him in exchange for $600,000 — in a small, intimate ceremony.v, vi The couple would go on to divorce in 1981, the year Do You was painted.vii
Copley once wrote, “Artists are being defined by being seen naked. It is a frightening business. I would have preferred to be a writer.”viiiDo You is a unique work that strips Copley naked to his psyche, with all its beautiful and ugly parts intact.
i Richard Flood, “William Copley: Phyllis Kind Gallery,” ArtForum, May 1982, online
ii Claire Copley, “Regarding Copley’s Women”, in William N. Copley: Women, exh. cat., Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, 2017, p. 72.
iii Germano Celant, e.d., William N. Copley, exh. cat., Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2016, p. 21.
iv William N. Copley, quoted in Linn Lühn, Reflection on a Past Life, Walther König, 2014, pp. 9-10.
v Germano Celant, William N. Copley, p. 233.
vi Josie Thaddeus-Johns, “Sex and the city – William N. Copley in New York”, Apollo, March 31, 2020, online.
vi William N. Copley, quoted in Linn Lühn, Reflection on a Past Life, Walther König, 2014, pp. 9-10.
vii Germano Celant, William N. Copley, p. 235.
viii William N. Copley, quoted in William N. Copley: Women, Paul Kasmin Gallery, 2017, p. 8.
Provenance
Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York Galerie Kewenig, Frechen-Bachem (acquired from the above in 1992) Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2014
Exhibited
New York, Phyllis Kind Gallery, CPLY–Recent Paintings, January 6–30, 1982 Amsterdam, SHOWROOM, William N. Copley: Paintings from 1960-1994, September 10–October 13, 2015
Literature
Andrew Russeth, “William N. Copleys Are All Over Art Basel Miami Beach,” ARTnews, December 3, 2014, online (illustrated)
William N. Copley, also known by the name of CPLY, drew attention to himself in the late 1940s by fusing elements of Surrealism and Pop Art. Copley focused on symbols of American pop culture—staples of American society including pin-up girls, cowboys and the flag—and transformed them into more accessible, universal icons that could appeal to both men and women without bias.
In the '70s, Copley distinguished himself from the rest of the Surrealists by attempting to represent the tumultuous relationship between erotic and pornographic symbolism. He celebrated the female body, sexual freedom and, most of all, the promiscuity of America.