Bill beckley photography biography

Bill Beckley (American, b.

Bill Beckley February 11, — August 17, was an American narrative and conceptual artist. Bill Beckley was born on February 11, , in Hamburg, Pennsylvania , [ 2 ] [ 3 ] a small farming town in the Amish countryside. He started drawing at age five. Beckley went on to exhibit with several European and American Galleries that showed conceptual art, photography, and texts.

Bill Beckley (February 11, – August 17, ) was an American narrative and conceptual artist.

He exhibited at the Paris Biennale in ; [ 12 ] the Venice Biennale in ; [ 13 ] [ 14 ] at Documenta in Kassel , Germany, in ; [ 15 ] and in the Whitney Biennial in During the early seventies, Beckley was part of a loose-knit group of conceptual artists that used images and fictional texts in a form that came to be known as Narrative Art.

In the early seventies, Beckley escaped from the black, white, and gray tonalities of early conceptualism. With his color photographs and references to advertising images, he influenced artists of the so-called Picture Generation like Richard Prince [ 20 ] and Jeff Koons , whom he met at the above-mentioned Projects Room exhibition of color photographs at the Museum of Modern Art.

From glimpses of himself and his obsessions, he assembled enigmatic works in which modular form and its permutations sometimes read as the story of a sexual relationship or as a baffling involuted image of sexuality itself. In he spoke on his work at The University of Bologna, and he wrote a chapter for Contemporary Visual Culture and the Sublime, published by Routledge Press in He began teaching semiotics at the School of Visual Arts in Beckley married Deirdre Williams, a costume designer for films, in They divorced in He married Laurie Johenning, a sculptor, in They had two sons, Tristan and Liam.

He died on August 17, , at his home in Kerhonkson, New York. Contents move to sidebar hide.