Skip to main content
Collections Menu
SAM'S collection
Image Not Available for Now Here's That Blame Treaty
Now Here's That Blame Treaty
Image Not Available for Now Here's That Blame Treaty

Now Here's That Blame Treaty

Date1983
Label TextThis densely laden work is a quintessential example of William T. Wiley’s enigmatic use of puns, self-referential symbolism, sociopolitical references, and chaotically overlapping imagery. We can make out distinct and disparate forms in a darkened artist studio—a palette and easel, a baby’s pacifier, a skull, an angel, an infinity symbol—that seem to suggest but do not fully reveal a complex narrative. In the center radiates a glowing grid, both a recurring symbol in the artist’s work and one that paradoxically represents a mainstream form of geometric abstraction standing in diametrical opposition to Wiley’s idiosyncratic and elusive consciousness.
Object number92.140
Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture, June 21 - September 2, 2024.
Credit LineGift of Marcia Bartholme and Rockwell Smith
DimensionsSheet h.: 51 7/8 in. Sheet w.: 41 7/8 in. Image h.: 44 3/4 in. Image w.: 35 3/4 in. Plate h.: 45 in. Plate w.: 36 in.
MediumEtching