Bill Wilson (1932-2016)

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Bill Wilson (1932-2016)

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Jean Kusina added 2 new photos.

16 hrs ·

Heavy heart-- Today I learned of the passing of my dear friend Bill, better known to many followers of his work as William S. Wilson. If you were lucky enough to know him, you understand what a great loss this is. Love to our mutual friends.

Members: 15
Latest Activity: Mar 29, 2018

William S. Wilson

William S. Wilson, born in Baltimore, 1932, was graduated with Honors in Philosophy of Science from the University of Virginia, then went on to Yale University where he received an M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature. He has taught at Queens College, Columbia University, The Cooper Union, and the School of Visual Arts. He has lectured on Eva Hesse at the Jeu de Paume, Tate Modern, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the College Art Association. His novel Birthplace: moving into nearness, was nominated for a Pen-Faulkner Award. He has received an N.E.A. art-writer’s grant of $10,000.00, and a $40,000.00 Warhol Foundation Grant, 2012, for a book about the life and art of Ray Johnson.

source: http://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/research/archive

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Comment by TIZIANA BARACCHI on February 3, 2016 at 10:19pm

Comment by Ruud Janssen on February 3, 2016 at 6:34pm

Comment by Ruud Janssen on February 3, 2016 at 6:33pm

another sample e-mail from Bill Wilson. We were discussing if Ray and Fluxus have connections:

(e-mail from Bill on 8-2-2004)

 

Ruud: I'm ready.  Understand that I met Ray in autumn, 1956, when he had become himself in his art, with a wide and deep religio-philosophy of art and life, so that when, several years later, Fluxs came along, he was at least 34 years old, and neither likely to be influenced in his decisions, nor so ambitious in a career that he would want or need the momentum of fluxus to carry him forward (toward his goal, so different from the goes of  George Macnias).  Tomorrow Julia Robinson comes to discuss Ray and Fluxus.  I have assembled much material for her visit, and will see what she says.  Much is converging around Fluxus, but my interest will be as much differentiating Ray from Fluxus as it will be suggesting the overlaps between REJ and Fluxus, a dimension of the era, with apparent common sensibilities, but not an explanation of influence or even a description of co-operations and un-co-operations.  Ray didn't care about differentiating himself from artists whose work did not overlap with her in anyway: he was intensely concerned to differentiate himself from Fluxus: B.

  

458 West 25th Street
New York City
New York 10001-6502
USA

vox 212 989 2229

Comment by Ruud Janssen on February 3, 2016 at 6:29pm

sample e-mail from Bill Wilson. Always detailed, full with information, and humor too.....

(e-mail received from Bill on 7-1-2004)

 

Ruud: sorry about your e-mail: something complicated happened when I went to Venice, & much e-mail got discombobulated or just never manifested.  As geologists say, schist happens.  I will be happy to cooperate on study of Ray Johnson in his relations with Fluxus.  My perspective is radically and disablingly distorted because I mostly took over Ray's vividly held opinions.  I can explain his judgments, and the wide interval he maintained between himself and George Maciunas, with the understanding that I was not quite face-to-face with George, but was in effect standing behind Ray, who certainly was blocking the light of Fluxus, because he experienced it as a contrived or devised "movement," as not a spontaneous upsurge of immediacies with unpredictable immediacies and splurges of improvisations.  So do feel free to ask questions, which I will be happy to answer from my slanted point of view, trying to think through for myself a long episode in which I think that I was wrong to go through Ray's responses rather than on my own energies.  Ray of course would have preferred that I trust my own unrehearsed reactions to Fluxus, not derivative notions: & I did write two essays about Alison Knowles, whom I see ungraciously attacked in Ben's unpleasant website.  If the YAM festival qualifies as Fluxus, he was certainly in support of YAM as a compliment to MAY Wilson, yielding MAY-YAM. 

 

The HUGE news here is the surfacing of Ray's photographs, taken with disposable cameras the last two or three years of his life: a long visual farewell letter, or perhaps a visual suicide-note.  The photographs present scholarly problems---the order in which he took them, the names he lettered on cardboard and photographed for example in graveyards.  I am eager to study them, though they are emotionally raw for me---the heart-scalding visual thoughts of a man who knew at the time that he was going to drown himself if he could live long enough to do so: Bill

 

Mail the postcards to people!  I'll give you more.  Paper objects should have adventures to tell of before being embalmed in archives...

 

Happy New Year: I sense your happiness in your activities in both romance and mailart, and your happiness is a source of happiness to me and I am sure many others...

 

458 West 25th Street
New York City
New York 10001-6502
USA

vox 212 989 2229

Comment by Richard Canard on February 3, 2016 at 6:29pm

02.03.16 ...am saddened by the news of the passing of Bill Wilson (Son of the legendary Mail Artist May Wilson). While I was never qualified nor considered a serious part of his intellectual circle,  Bill Wilson did communicate with me upon rare occasion & seemed to be most tolerant  of my antics. To my mind, he easily fit the classic phrase but rare justification of "a gentleman & a scholar"... Was privileged as well to once visit his home in NYC (as a member of a whole gaggle of  fellow North Carolinians who were attempting to organize an exhibition of  Ray Johnson & his association with Black Mountain College) It was a joyous & overwhelming experience to witness the  wall in his living room covered with vintage Ray Johnson works. ...Not exactly sure what the source may have been but I vaguely recall a reference to Bill Wilson as " Ray Johnson's Boswell" ( i.e. "James Boswell", biographer of "Samuel Johnson", 18th century British Literary figure).  Rest In Peace.

Comment by Ruud Janssen on February 3, 2016 at 6:16pm

at the Stendhal Gallery Bill Wilson and John Held Jr. Photo's by Ruud Janssen

Comment by Ruud Janssen on February 3, 2016 at 6:14pm

from Ray Johnson.....

Comment by Ruud Janssen on February 3, 2016 at 6:13pm

For my mail-interview project I also tried to interview Bill years ago. Here is the start, but the interview never finished, neither did I publish the research and documentations. Here is how I tried to start and Bill's first reaction:

The Interview.

 

Bill Wilson & I already have corresponded for years. During the Mail-Interview I did from 1994-2000 I also invited him for a mail-interview, but then the time wasn’t right because he had other commitments. In the end of 2003 I asked him for a second chance. This time an interview that would be held for the Fluxus Heidelberg Center. An interview that will focus on the Connections between Ray Johnson and Fluxus. After lots of e-mail exchanges somehow the interview got started:

 

(first question sent via e-mail and snail-mail on 18-4-2004)

 

Ruud Janssen: Dear Bill, as you might guess I am still waiting for a good moment to start the interview. I asked in a previous e-mail if you have a short biography available. If so, I would be happy to receive it. In the several resources I went though I already learned a great deal.

 

The line in the interview will probably be in-depth. So I will try to focus on several items in which you can direct yourself a lot as well.

 

What should be the first question I ask you? With best wishes, Ruud

 

(reply by e-mail on 20-4-2004. Together with this answer he sent some more files for my research and a bibliography. Also a note on an article that had just been placed online)

 

Bill Wilson: Ruud, I have two places from which an interview might start:

 

1) I need to go through my archives in order to document the origins of "Please send to" as the origins of the network.  The origins of mailart are within irretrievable conditions, yet I can sketch the actions as I participated in them.  I will write only from the documents in my archives: other people must speak for themselves.   I don't know if a complete narrative or chronicle is possible, but I can, really for the first time with evidence in documents, tell what I experienced.

 

2) I need to think through and document Ray's art as an expression of friendliness, both for mail-art, and for a possible show of collages which are designated as "portraits" of his friends.  A show may be mounted next season, and I might write a catalogue.  However even to advise about the show, I need to think about the society of friends brought together by Ray.  I note gratefully on an envelope from Luc Fierens the words, "in the spirit of mailart as a social spirit," and "mailart is social art."  His words help to focus on the plane of moral values, rather than the "fame" or even modest recognition mailart might bring.   That theme of art among a society of friends constructed by participating in art differentiates Ray's work from the hobbyist shows to which people send decorated postcards with no intimacy, no rapport, no commitment to friendliness except in a generalized way which is sentimental because it costs little in action.

 

So let the interview begin,

 

Bill

Comment by Ruud Janssen on February 3, 2016 at 5:48pm

Comment by Ruud Janssen on February 3, 2016 at 5:47pm

 

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