In 1996, Will Cotton began to develop an iconography in which the landscape itself became an object of desire.
11 Facts About Will Cotton
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Will Cotton creates elaborate maquettes of these settings from real baked goods made in his Manhattan studio as a visual source for the final works.
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Interested in cultural iconography, Will Cotton's art makes use of the common language of consumer culture shared across geographical boundaries.
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Will Cotton considers the visual threads in his work, drawn from imagery ranging from the Candy Land board game and gingerbread houses to pinup art and cotton candy, to be part of the popular culture lexicon.
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Will Cotton has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe.
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Will Cotton was represented by Mary Boone Gallery, New York, from 2000 until the gallery's closure in 2019.
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Will Cotton is currently represented by Galerie Templon, Paris, Brussels, and New York and Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, Colorado.
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Will Cotton's works have been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ; the Seattle Art Museum, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany ; the Hudson River Museum ; the Triennale di Milano, Italy the Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris, the Orlando Museum of Art, and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana.
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Will Cotton's work is in the collections of the Seattle Art Museum, Washington, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.
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Will Cotton was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the New York Academy of Art where he was a senior critic in 2012.
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Will Cotton was the Artistic Director for Katy Perry's 2010 music video, California Gurls, which was based on themes and imagery from his paintings and painted the album cover for her 3rd studio album Teenage Dream.