Sidney Lawrence reviews William T. Wiley's current exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, "What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley In Retrospect," in the Dec. 9 Wall Street Journal (online edition). Lawrence is effusive about Wiley's wit, style, and significance:
...Mr. Wiley's work is unlike any other in recent art, a visual analog to the stream-of-consciousness strain in 20th-century literature. Likening Mr. Wiley to Virginia Woolf or James Joyce is dicey, of course, but his swirling cornucopias of images, words and associations are every bit as intoxicating, operating beyond their medium, in the subconscious. He is less a contemporary artist than a national treasure.
"What's It All Mean" travels next to the Berkeley Art Museum, where it will open in the spring of 2010; the show includes Kali-fornia Dreamin, Wiley's 2006/2007 edition of etching and watercolor buttons inside a handmade leatherbound box, published by Magnolia Editions.
