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Will We Get Here Now by William T. Wiley
Photo CreditCarol M. Highsmith Photography
Will We Get Here Now
Photo CreditCarol M. Highsmith Photography

Will We Get Here Now

Artist
Year2003
Classification painting
Medium mixed media on canvas
Dimensions60 x 72 in. (152.4 x 182.9 cm)
Credits Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
Location
  • In his paintings, William T. Wiley uses puns, satire, and absurd juxtapositions to show that both visual and verbal language are unstable in meaning and subject to change, depending on their context, the speaker, and the reader.  This is visible in "Will We Get Here Now," in which figures, symbols, and scrawled text cover a vast landscape.  A Tower of Babel-like form rises in the middle of the painting, suggesting the Bible's account of a world condemned to linguistic confusion.  Wiley portrays this explicitly with interchangeable homonyms ("ennui" becomes "on we!"), bungled symbols (a barcode gives up counting in the lower right), and subversive visual tricks (a stain in the upper right becomes a religion icon).  A judge condemns the artist for having "too many words," but Wiley replies "mess is lore," an inversion of the adage "less is more" that suggests how easily the inherited facts of language are muddled.