This delightful exhibition brings together a selection of works on paper by William N. Copley (1919–1996), the iconoclastic American painter who signed his works CPLY. A wealthy patron of the Surrealists, CPLY taught himself to paint in the late 1940s, developing a cartoonish style that combined Matisse’s love of pattern, Picabia’s subversiveness, and Krazy Kat-creator George Herriman’s knowing humor. One of CPLY’s trademark motifs is tweed-suited Everyman, who pursues life, liberty, and naked, pneumatic blondes while being pursued in turn by angry gendarmes and wives.
This cast of characters shows up in many of the works in this show, dating from the early to mid-1960s. In one rendering, a woman sits by a fireplace, presumably brooding over an errant husband—perhaps the same husband, seen in nearby painting on paper, locked in a close embrace with the downstairs maid.
Also on view are drawings from the 1970s related to two painting series from the same period: “Nouns,” which depict ordinary items such as musical instruments and tools, and “X-Rated,” which is based on images from hard-core porn magazines. In the first group, an overstuffed sofa hilariously epitomizes Victorian probity, while the corner of a bedroom wallpapered in a flowery pattern speaks of claustrophobia and existential despair. In second group, a woman clad in a crocheted top and nothing else presents an icon of the sexual revolution created out of a series of triangles (pubic hair, and unbuttoned opening over her navel, and exposed cleavage) that call to mind Brancusi’s Endless Column. (Just one of a number of references here to major art movements of the 20th century.)
The drawings of some artists shed light on their working process. CPLY’s—absurdist, affecting, and perennially incorrect—are the pure expression of an irreverent spirit.—Anne Doran