"I admire painters who can work directly from nature, but for me that seems to lead to anecdotal painting. Realism is about interpreting daily life in the world around us. I'm trying to paint a world that's not around us."
William Bailey
William Bailey
Born 1930 Council Bluffs, Iowa
Education
1957 M.F.A., School of Art, Yale University
1955 B.F.A., School of Art, Yale University
1951-53 United States Army, Sergeant in Japan and Korea
1948-51 School of Fine Arts, University of Kansas
"It took time - too much time - for the magnitude of Diebenkorn's achievement to be fully recognized in New York. For entirely figurative artists, of course, it was harder still. They were reluctantly granted a niche at the side of the "mainstream," but not much more. Few people in the 1970s would have taken the view that, for all the difficulty of comparing apples and oranges, the calm and timelessly ordered still-lives of William Bailey were at least as full of pictorial intelligence and visual subtlety as anything in color-field painting, although it was obvious that they belonged to a different order of pictorial ambition from that of most American realism at the time, which tended to be anecdotal and nostalgic. There was nothing nostalgic or narrative about Bailey's work. Its calm arrays of pots, jugs, eggs, and bowls make up an ideal form-world, Platonic in its removal from "the itch of desire." Nothing spills out, thrusts forward, or wants to be touched or possessed - the traditional solicitations of still-life painting, most materialistic of arts. They are as removed from touch (and as grandly articulate in their scale) as the façade of a fine quattrocento building, seen from the other side of the piazza: it is no accident that Bailey should have had a profound attraction to Italy, or that he spent summers in Monterchi, where Piero della Francesca's Madonna del Parto presides in the local cemetery. They are less domestic and tactile than Chardin and more precise (and, crucially, less modest) than Morandi. Distance envelops them; they are, as his friend the poet Mark Strand put it, "realizations of an idea," in which all the groping toward the idea has been submerged - an extreme opposite to the American taste for works of art which bear the signs of their struggle, unedited, in their final form."
- From Robert Hughes, "American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America"
Education
1957 M.F.A., School of Art, Yale University
1955 B.F.A., School of Art, Yale University
1951-53 United States Army, Sergeant in Japan and Korea
1948-51 School of Fine Arts, University of Kansas
"It took time - too much time - for the magnitude of Diebenkorn's achievement to be fully recognized in New York. For entirely figurative artists, of course, it was harder still. They were reluctantly granted a niche at the side of the "mainstream," but not much more. Few people in the 1970s would have taken the view that, for all the difficulty of comparing apples and oranges, the calm and timelessly ordered still-lives of William Bailey were at least as full of pictorial intelligence and visual subtlety as anything in color-field painting, although it was obvious that they belonged to a different order of pictorial ambition from that of most American realism at the time, which tended to be anecdotal and nostalgic. There was nothing nostalgic or narrative about Bailey's work. Its calm arrays of pots, jugs, eggs, and bowls make up an ideal form-world, Platonic in its removal from "the itch of desire." Nothing spills out, thrusts forward, or wants to be touched or possessed - the traditional solicitations of still-life painting, most materialistic of arts. They are as removed from touch (and as grandly articulate in their scale) as the façade of a fine quattrocento building, seen from the other side of the piazza: it is no accident that Bailey should have had a profound attraction to Italy, or that he spent summers in Monterchi, where Piero della Francesca's Madonna del Parto presides in the local cemetery. They are less domestic and tactile than Chardin and more precise (and, crucially, less modest) than Morandi. Distance envelops them; they are, as his friend the poet Mark Strand put it, "realizations of an idea," in which all the groping toward the idea has been submerged - an extreme opposite to the American taste for works of art which bear the signs of their struggle, unedited, in their final form."
- From Robert Hughes, "American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America"
source
Bailey is best known for his paintings of singular vessels arranged on table tops or ledges below large expanses of muted toned walls. The cups, bowls,jugs and egg cups, which may indeed exist, are painted from memory, described with a poignancy that sets the paintings outside of time and place. The monochrome expanses of the walls, which signify a minimalist eye and brush, further remove the works from any suggestion of a real setting. This is similarly true of Bailey’s paintings of female figures. The women are not artist’s models but are painted entirely from imagination. They are posed sitting or standing in strange interiors looking out
at the viewer. They are often nude and set almost weightlessly in their imaginary rooms. All these works, for Bailey, are abstract. They do not pretend to be realistically described. The shadows may be a little off, the corners of the walls not quite right. The figures beg just about every question one can think of.
The catalogue that accompanies this exhibition includes an essay by Terry Teachout who describes the emergence of Bailey’s mature style and the difficulties these apparently realist paintings pose for the viewer as they return repeatedly to the same subject matter:“A naked woman sits on a wooden chair, one elbow resting on a wooden table. Next to her on the floor are four pieces of luggage, arranged in such a way as to indicate her imminent departure-or has she only just come to this cell-like room? A nearby window admits a flood of sunlight into the room, and in the distance we see green, rolling hills. Once again the woman and her surroundings appear to have been painted realistically, but a second look reveals that her slender form is simplified and stylized, and the blankness of her wide-set, staringeyes tells us nothing about what has brought her to what the title of the painting reveals to be a room near Italy’s Tiber River.
Who is she?”
William Bailey is Professor of Art Emeritus at Yale University. He is a member of The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a Member of the Board, Smithsonian Archives of American Art from 2000 to the present. He is a trustee for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation from 1970 to the present. Bailey has an extensive exhibition history, and his works appear in numerous public and private
collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; among many others. Bailey has shown in New York since the late 1960’s. In 2006 a traveling exhibition of works on paper was shown at the Philbroook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, Alexander Hogue Gallery, University of Tulsa, OK and Wichita Art Museum, KS.
at the viewer. They are often nude and set almost weightlessly in their imaginary rooms. All these works, for Bailey, are abstract. They do not pretend to be realistically described. The shadows may be a little off, the corners of the walls not quite right. The figures beg just about every question one can think of.
The catalogue that accompanies this exhibition includes an essay by Terry Teachout who describes the emergence of Bailey’s mature style and the difficulties these apparently realist paintings pose for the viewer as they return repeatedly to the same subject matter:“A naked woman sits on a wooden chair, one elbow resting on a wooden table. Next to her on the floor are four pieces of luggage, arranged in such a way as to indicate her imminent departure-or has she only just come to this cell-like room? A nearby window admits a flood of sunlight into the room, and in the distance we see green, rolling hills. Once again the woman and her surroundings appear to have been painted realistically, but a second look reveals that her slender form is simplified and stylized, and the blankness of her wide-set, staringeyes tells us nothing about what has brought her to what the title of the painting reveals to be a room near Italy’s Tiber River.
Who is she?”
William Bailey is Professor of Art Emeritus at Yale University. He is a member of The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a Member of the Board, Smithsonian Archives of American Art from 2000 to the present. He is a trustee for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation from 1970 to the present. Bailey has an extensive exhibition history, and his works appear in numerous public and private
collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; among many others. Bailey has shown in New York since the late 1960’s. In 2006 a traveling exhibition of works on paper was shown at the Philbroook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, Alexander Hogue Gallery, University of Tulsa, OK and Wichita Art Museum, KS.
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