Mr. Unpopular
<p><em>Mr. Unpopular</em> is among the most enduring of Wiley's several surrogate self-portraits. He is depicted here in Landfall's first Ontario Street studio, framed by the culmination of ten years of printed ephemera left by artists who worked there. Wiley created this image as a kind of bittersweet memento for the workshop, which in 1980 was forced to move to new quarters because of encroaching development. Today, Landfall's original location has become a glitzy strip of bars and restaurants.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1980
- Dimensions
- Image, max: 90.5 × 70 cm (35 11/16 × 27 9/16 in.); Sheet: 96.5 × 71.1 cm (38 × 28 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- William T. Wiley
Artist
Painting
William T. Wiley was an American painter and sculptor working in a deliberately idiosyncratic style that combined abstraction, figuration, text, and found materials. Active from the 1960s onward, his work resisted categorical classification, layering wordplay, cartographic references, and autobiographical fragments into densely composite compositions. Wiley's practice embraced chance, humor, and conceptual play as formal strategies rather than ornamental gestures. His paintings and installations occupied a distinctive position within postwar American art, neither purely abstract nor representational, but rather a hybrid form that prioritized invention and visual wit.
Full artist profile →More
More by William T. Wiley
Yes But Is it Torture?
2009 · Etching in black and watercolor on white wove paper
Hommage to Allan Ginsburg
1998 · Lithograph on tan Japanese paper, laid down on white wove paper (chine collé)
Three Mile Island/Three Years Later
1983 · Color lithograph in four colors on white wove paper
Rhoom for Error
1983 · Soft ground etching and monotype on white wove paper
Three Mile Island
1979 · Color lithograph in three colors on tan laid paper laid down on white wove paper
Spooky on the Line, from N.A.M.E portfolio
1979 · Lithograph on white wove paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- William T. Wiley
- Year
- 1980
- Dimensions
- Image, max: 90.5 × 70 cm (35 11/16 × 27 9/16 in.); Sheet: 96.5 × 71.1 cm (38 × 28 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1980-069737
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified