Bill Beckley

Bill Beckley is a New York-based conceptual artist who garnered acclaim in the 1970s for his photographic works that combined image and text to create repetitive often highly sexualized compositions. Pioneering the use of saturated color photography and overt references to popular advertising tropes, Beckley and contemporaries like William Wegman, John Baldessari, and Gerhard Richter are often referred to as part of the Narrative Art movement, a loosely associated group of artists who influenced the Pictures Generation. In the 1990s Beckley’s conceptual explorations thrived in an academic setting, leading him to compile a series of popular books called Aesthetics Today for the School of Visual Arts, where he has taught semiotics since 1970.

Beckley’s photographs have been included in numerous gallery and museum shows around the world, including the Paris Biennale, The Venice Biennale, Documenta, and The Whitney Biennial.

Courtesy of Brooklyn Academy of Music