(New York 1919–1996 Key West/ Florida)
Bathing Beauties, 1969, monogrammed, dated cply 69, acrylic on canvas, 73.5 x 91.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection Julien Levy, New York
Tajan, Paris, Hommage à Julien Levy, October 5 – 7 2004, lot 128
Private Collection Germany
Sale Sotheby’s, New York, 2 April 2008, lot 68
Private Collection Germany - acquired from the above by the present owner

„When you know what art is not, the whole world is open to you.“

William Copley

The American William „Bill“ Nelson Copley is truly an exceptional artist. His unorthodox path as the adopted son of an industrial magnate and newspaper publisher, via a stint as a rather unsuccessful gallery owner and exhibitor of great Surrealists, to a self-exhibiting artist is probably unique. His biting and sometimes transgressive humour has earned him the reputation of probably the most idiosyncratic artist in recent art history.

The vocabulary of his visual language is simple and infused with a naïve directness. Copley‘s trademark style is sexy and tongue-in-cheek, but above all devoid of any moralism. He put together his ever-recurring repertoire of wacky pictorial formulas early on. He presents the comical next to the comic, stages lust lustily in a way done by few before him. He held on to his outlandish subjects much as he did a skilfully controlled artlessness throughout his life.
The figurative display of the narrative colourful imagery usually sits in front of decorative surface structures in a mixture of everyday scenes, American stereotypes, pin ups, comics, western saloons and film fragments. All his works are characterised by his unmistakable style of simple contours with generous, almost naïve brushstrokes, which trace the figures’ outlines in a reduced and trivial manner. He is a master of ambiguity and plays with the viewer’s voyeuristic expectations.

He cynically deals with the erotic conventions of the sexes in all their facets. His works are directed against the collective ethos, against bourgeois decency and conventional high art. But the ironisation of state symbols as well as cryptic mockery of well-known masterpieces also find their way into his oeuvre.
The present work, „Bathing Beauties“, is permeated by his whimsical style, which manifests itself in the faceless and anonymous protagonists of his paintings: corpulent lightly dressed ladies and a small man in a suit, armed with the attributes of respectability and sublimated sexuality - the umbrella and the bowler hat.

„Paintings have a subversive power, and they penetrate me unconsciously.
And it is precisely this subversiveness that a painting needs to have in order to free our thinking from social constraints.“

William Copley