William Pope.L
William Pope.L (* 1955 in Newark , New Jersey ) is an American visual artist best known for his work in performance art and interventionist public art . He also worked artistically in the fields of painting, photography and theater. In 2002 he took part in the Whitney Biennial .
The surname Pope.L is not a stage name, but was created by Pope.L's mother from the surname of Pope.L's father Pope and the first letter of her maiden name Lancaster .
education
Pope.L studied at the Pratt Institute from 1973 to 1975 and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program from 1977 to 1978 . In 1978 he made a Bachelor of Arts at Montclair State University in Montclair (New Jersey) . Every summer he supported severely disabled people in summer camps in rural areas. He received a Master of Fine Arts in fine arts from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University , New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1981.
Early work
From 1990 to 2010 Pope.L was a lecturer in drama and public speaking at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. As a faculty member, he directed a production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun , in which he used both African American and fair-skinned actors as members of the same family.
For the ATM piece performed in 1997 , he tied himself to the door of a Chase Manhattan bank with a two and a half meter long Italian sausage and wore nothing but a skirt made up of dollar bills. The idea was to give a dollar to each customer when they walked into the bank. However, it only took about a minute for security to intervene.
Pope.L began the eRacism project during the late 1970s. It included over 40 persistence-based performances that consisted of "crawls" of varying lengths and durations. In an example titled Tompkins Square Crawl (1991), Pope.L in a suit crawled through the gutter in Tompkins Square Park , New York, while using one hand to push a potted plant in front of him. Another project, The Great White Way , consisted of crawling the entire 22 miles of New York Broadway and lasted five years. For this he wore a Superman outfit and strapped a skateboard on his back. Documentation of this performance was shown at the 2002 Whitney Biennial . He attended Upper St. Clair High School, where he donated a lot of money to rebuild the school, whereupon the school library was named after him.
From 2001 onwards
In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts gave Pope.L another $ 42,000 grant to fund its travel review project called Pope.L: eRacism . However, shortly after the announcement of this award, the acting chairman Robert S. Martin lifted the approval for the financing. Joel Wachs , then president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts , told the New York Times in the December 21st issue that it is important to stand firm, especially given what he sees as an attack on freedom of expression. He wanted this exhibition because he thought it was important. He did not want the NEA to be able to stop this with its decision and asked for other donors to get in touch. The Warhol Foundation, together with the Rockefeller Foundation and the LEF Foundation, subsidized the project with US $ 50,000. As a result, eRacism was exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, in 2003 at Diverse Works space in Houston, at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) in Oregon and at Artists Space in New York.
In connection with this review, the curator Mark Bessire produced the catalog "William Pope.L: Friendliest Black Artist in America".
In 2002 Pope.L received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2004 he became a Guggenheim Fellow. In 2005, he traveled from Maine to Missouri with The Black Factory, an art installation on wheels, as part of The Interventionists Show organized by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MOCA). The Factory set up its interactive workshop on the street in each of the cities and people brought objects that represented blackness to them. The “workers” then used these objects to perform skits and stimulate conversation: a stream of ideas, images and experiences. Most of the objects were photographed and thus became part of the virtual library of the factory, others came to the factory archive for later use and some were also shredded to make new products available in the factory's souvenir shop.
In 2006, he was selected as one of the United States Artists' fellows for which he was awarded a $ 50,000 grant.
He has worked alongside other performing artists such as Sean Penn , Willem Dafoe , Brad Pitt , Steve Buscemi, and Juliette Binoche in Robert Wilson's LAB HD Portraits. In 2008 Pope.L's play "One Substance, Eight Supports, One Situation" was selected to participate in the group exhibition "Black Is, Black Ain't" by the Renaissance Society . In 2017 he took part in documenta 14 .
In 2010 Pope.L was appointed a faculty member at the University of Chicago.
Literature on William Pope.L
- Mark HC Bessire (Ed.): William Pope.L - "The Friendliest Black Artist in America" . MIT Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-262-02533-1 .
- The Whole Entire World: Interview with William Pope.L by Amy Horschak in Dak'Art 2006 , La Biennale de Dakar: Dakar, 2006, pp. 382–383.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Interview with William Pope.L by Martha Wilson. In: Bomb Magazine, Spring 1996
- ↑ Barbara Pollack: Superman Enters the Culture Wars ( English ) In: The Village Voice . S. 2. January 8, 2002. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
- ^ William Pope.L: "The Friendliest Black Artist in America" ( Memento from September 10, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Mark HC Bessire. MIT Press
- ^ "William Pope.L: Artists space / the project / mason gross Art Galleries at Rutgers University" ( Memento from July 13, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Meghan Dailey, ArtForum. April 2004.
- ^ William Pope.L: Performances ( Memento October 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) in Foundation for Contemporary Arts
- ↑ "A Tribute to Dr. William A. Pope, Superintendent of Schools ( Memento from July 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) "in: Upper St. Clair Today, Summer 2003 (pdf; 12.13 MB)
- ↑ Robin Pogrebin: Warhol Foundation Finances Work rebuffed by NEA in: New York Times of 21 December 2001
- ^ Mark HC Bessire: William Pope.L: The Friendliest Black Artist in America, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts - London, England, 2002
- ^ Guggenheim Fellows: William Pope.L
- ^ Nicholas O'Brien: The Black Factory in: Bates Museum of Art
- ^ William Pope.L: USA Rockefeller Fellow
- ^ The Renaissance Society: Black Is, Black Ain't ( July 20, 2011 memento in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Department of Visual Arts, University of Chicago: Faculty: William Pope.L
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pope.L, William |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pope Lancaster, William |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American visual artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1955 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Newark (New Jersey) |