William N. Copley's world of surreal pop objects
In the early 1970s, William N. Copley's work focused on the representation of objects. In his characteristic style, he created a surreal world, which, in a crossover between narrative still life and exuberant ornamentation, is centered on everyday objects, using stylistic devices from Pop Art and Surrealism. He isolates small objects such as pipes, tools, or kitchen utensils, but also large objects like pieces of furniture, bells, or, as is the case here, a stroller, from their natural environment and presents them in a striking close-up, with the typical black outlines of Pop Art, in front of colorful surfaces.

The isolation and flat representation, known, among others, from Surrealists like René Magritte, lends the objects a peculiar aura of stillness. However, the human presence is still somehow tangible. The original use of the objects remains visible in the mind's eye. The ringing bells, the clattering of glass and dishes, the blows of a hammer, children crying in a stroller: Copley's objects form a backdrop for associations, memories, and imaginations, or as Siegfried Gohr describes it: “What at first appears to be naive, proves to be the strategy of a powerful evocation of things.” (Siegfried Gohr, Copley und die Lust an den Dingen, in: Galerie Fred Jahn, William N. Copley. Nouns, Munich 1999, p. 7).

This is also true of Copley's present work, “Baby Carriage,” from 1972, which was created the year his daughter Theodora was born. He staged the stroller as a kind of throne in front of a bright pink background, adorned with an exuberant, baroque-like decor equipped with soft pillows and a pink sunshade. The work appears extraordinarily playful and full of ironic elements that pique our curiosity about the quiet dialogues in Copley's world of things, which is never innocent. As models for his still lifes from the “Nouns” and “Mail Order” series, he often uses images from the mail-order catalogs of the American department store chain “Sears, Roebuck & Co.” from the period around 1900, breathing new life, as it were, into objects that appear old-fashioned today.

The American artist's pictorial work is rooted in Surrealism. However, Copley is also considered a forerunner of pop art. This is expressed more clearly in the way he stages objects, a skillful balancing act that combines two fundamentally different art movements as a matter of course, without completely committing to either style. [AR]