Raw Bar

Exhibited as part of his solo presentation at the Fondazione Prada, Milan, William Nelson Copley’s Raw Bar, 1982, is one of the first screens the artist made. Standing almost two metres tall, Raw Bar is comprised of three panels, each decorated with the same woman in various states of undress. Copley was inspired by the cinema, pinups, and cartoons, reflected in the figure’s unarticulated and abstracted body and the lack of pictorial depth. Flatness is characteristic of Copley’s practice and reinforced here by the tabs attached to the woman’s limbs which transform her into an almost life-sized paper doll: Copley remembers, ‘Because I don’t know perspective. [Roberto] Matta was out at my house one weekend and I said to him, “Would you teach me perspective because nobody knows perspective better than Matta and nobody is more articulate than he is.” He said, “Yes. We’ll go out to your studio in the morning.” So we went out in the morning and he picked up a piece of charcoal down and said, ‘No, I’m not going to do it.’ And walked out. Because he didn’t think I should do it.’ (W. Copley, ‘Oral History Interview with William Copley, January 30, 1968’, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Washington D.C., 1968, n. p.). The screen as a physical structure is redolent with insinuation, an object of intimacy, undress, and privacy, as well as the erotic and taboo. Indeed, the motif of the prostitute was central to Copley’s career and, within art historical narratives, such depictions subvert the representation of the idealized female nude. Humour and the unorthodox were of paramount significance to Copley, as, aesthetically, his practice looked to Surrealism, both formerly and ideologically: ‘I like to remark on the intensity of life, but I don’t want to take it apart into little pieces’ (W. Copley, ‘Oral History Interview with William Copley, January 30, 1968’, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Washington D.C., 1968, p. 22). With its vivid colours and forms, Raw Bar plays with and performs these histories, a nuanced interpretation at once beautiful, naïf, discerning and pointed.