William T. Wiley - Artist Books and Biography
William T. Wiley
William T. Wiley was a central figure in postwar American art and a key presence within the Funk Art movement in Northern California. His work moved fluidly across drawing, painting, and text, often combining imagery, symbolism, and humor to engage moral, political, and philosophical questions. Wiley taught for many years at the University of California, Davis, where he exerted a lasting influence on several generations of artists. His work is held in numerous major museum collections.
Alongside his work in more familiar media, Wiley produced a small number of artist books that extend his long-standing engagement with language, allegory, and narrative structure. These projects occupy a quieter but meaningful position within his practice, treating the book as an intimate, conceptual space rather than as a format for reproduction.
By: William T. Wiley
Text by: Elias Canetti
Six Etchings by: William T. Wiley
Twenty-nine photographs: Karl Bissinger
Edition of 350
The Arion Press, 2001.
Signed by the artist and the photographer
The artist book presented here brings together twenty-nine photographs taken in and around Marrakech by Karl Bissinger in late 1949, originally produced for a travel feature published in Flair magazine in February 1950. William T. Wiley’s six etchings were created specifically to accompany and interpret scenes from this photographic sequence. The book was designed and produced by Andrew Hoyem at the Arion Press in San Francisco, California.