This exhibition considers the career of William Bailey (b. 1930, B.F.A. 1955, M.F.A. 1957), the Kingman Brewster Professor Emeritus of Art at Yale, through a focused survey of the artist’s paintings, drawings, and prints. Special emphasis is given to Bailey’s still-life paintings in oil, including the Yale University Art Gallery’s Still Life—Table with Ochre Wall (1972), an outstanding example of the artist’s signature style. Known for his meditative canvases depicting objects and figures painted from memory, Bailey is one of the artists—including Audrey Flack, Alex Katz, and Philip Pearlstein—who defied the prevailing taste for abstraction at midcentury and instead committed themselves to representational painting. Bailey’s artistic inspirations span centuries, from Raphael and Piero della Francesca to Giorgio de Chirico and Piet Mondrian, with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Paul Cézanne in between.
Exhibition: William Bailey: Looking through Time
William Bailey, Still Life—Table with Ochre Wall, 1972. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with the aid of funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Susan Morse Hilles Matching Fund. © 2019 William Bailey/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
William Bailey, Plateau, 1993. Oil with wax medium on canvas. Private Collection. © 2019 William Bailey/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
William Bailey, Turning, 2003. Oil on linen. Private Collection.
© 2019 William Bailey/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Views of the Exhibition
Exhibition made possible by Richard and Ronay Menschel, Clifford Ross, the Eugénie Prendergast Fund for American Art given by Jan and Warren Adelson, and the Friends of American Arts at Yale Exhibition Fund. Organized by Mark D. Mitchell, the Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture.
Related Publication
William Bailey: Looking through Time
With essays by Mark D. Mitchell and John Yau
And an interview with the artist by Clifford Ross