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Indepth Arts News:
"William Anthony: Ironic Icon"
2004-08-13 until 2004-09-11
Stalke Gallery
Copenhagen, ,
DK Denmark
Stalke Gallery, Copenhagen proudly presents the first retrospective
exhibition with American artist William Anthony. The Ironic Icon that is the title that William Anthony has chosen for this
retrospective exhibition of his work. With a conceptual and humoristic
subtleness the title indicates that he is an artist who twists and turns the
conventions, clichés of and preconceptions about the world of images.
Whether they are appropriations of the works of classic and modern masters,
covers for gay magazines, posters for Broadway shows, illustrations of the
Bible (the only one Warhol could understand according to Warhol himself),
W.W. II history and Western mythology, or cartoonish takes on social events
or his private life, Anthony goes to work on the images with his
characteristic unorthodox and original pencil. In his eyes and hands no
image, type, style or period, is too sacred to be exposed to a process of
continuous interpretive mutation and transformation. Thus, for more than 40
years now he has created a still expanding and diverse oeuvre of images;
images where the familiar or recognizable becomes surreal, dumb, childish,
grotesque, silly, vulgar, and disturbing in ways that make you smile or
laugh out loud while wondering about the state and sanity of the world of
images (and the artist).
The irony of Anthony’s icons is not a cool postmodern indifference or
nihilism. On the contrary, it is an expression of honesty and no illusions.
They depict man, this stereotypical creature with a grin of his face, as he
really behaves, thinks, and looks behind the ideals of his narcissistic
mirror; how he gets in his own way all the time and does not make a whole
lot of sense. That is the irony Anthony deals with, or makes fun of, in his
icons.
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