The William N. Copley Estate is thrilled to announce X-Rated (1972–1974), a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by William N. Copley on view at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (Goethestraße 2/3), from March 13 to April 22, 2026.

Here is an excerpt from the gallery’s press release (which you can read in full here):

On view in the exhibition are works from Copley’s prolific ‘X-Rated’ series, created between 1972 and 1975, and first exhibited in 1974 in an eponymous show at the New York Cultural Center. This body of work draws on erotic imagery and ritualised motifs from adult magazines, seeking, in the artist’s own words, to ‘break through the barrier of pornography into the area of joy.’

In a decade when the sale of hardcore pornography was still illegal in the United States, Copley would buy ‘adult magazines’ under the counter, using them as a source for inventive figurative and narrative paintings that explored eroticism, sexual politics and the pursuit of pleasure. The artist was able to convey a wide range of tone in the ‘X-Rated’ paintings: some, such as The Seven Year Itch, 1973, are tender; others, including Viridiana, 1973, are exuberant; and almost all of them are openly humorous. Underscoring the open-endedness of sexual expression, Copley stated: ‘That’s what makes sex so much fun: since nobody really understands it, the possibilities for originality are endless.’

Copley typically produced two stages of preparatory drawings before starting a painting: an initial, small-scale study, followed by a larger version in which he refined the composition, introduced changes, and heightened the work’s pictorial dynamism. The resulting paintings maintain a deliberately slapdash style, with figures treated loosely rather than meticulously rendered. The exhibition makes this developmental process visible through multiple pairings of preparatory drawings and completed paintings, including Calcutta, 1973, and its counterpart Untitled, 1973.

Scenes of copulations and orgies are set against vivid, brightly coloured backgrounds animated by bold, geometric patterns, making them almost ‘too artful to be libidinous, let alone lascivious’, as critic James R. Mellow has remarked. It is both this treatment of the backgrounds and the contorted, entwined bodies with their attenuated limbs and schematic outlines that has prompted critics to draw a link between Copley and Henri Matisse more than once. Yet, while depictions of the nude and sexual imagery throughout art history have traditionally relied on suggestion and idealisation, Copley presents the sexual act directly, leaving nothing to the imagination.

With titles borrowed from Hollywood movies such as Les Quatre Cent Coups, The Exorcist or Tobacco Road, Copley tempered the shock of the pornographic image through comic playfulness and pop cultural sensibility. Manifesting a Surrealist disjunction, the movies rarely align explicitly with the images’ content, but the titles nevertheless set in motion a cascade of associations for the viewer. The title of the series, likewise, draws on terminology from the film industry: until the 1990s, the film- classification term ‘X-rated’ was used in the US for films only suitable for adults. Despite the cautionary notices that some visitors might find the subject matter offensive, the 1974 exhibition at the Cultural Center – curated by the newly appointed and strikingly progressive director Mario Amayo – received a notably positive critical response. Art in America writer Peter Schjeldahl hailed the presentation as a ‘uniformly gorgeous exhibition,’ noting that it marked ‘a highly satisfying development in Copley’s work’.

The ‘X-Rated’ series represents a singular chapter in Copley’s oeuvre, deliberately set apart from the prevailing currents of the early-1970s art scene. Even in today’s uncensored and image-saturated world, Copley’s suggestive canvases retain a subversive charge. By merging art and eroticism, Copley challenged conservative norms and rejected the notion of artistic neutrality, clearing away moralistic constraints in favour of directness and humour.

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Press Contact
Honor Westmacott
honor@maxhetzler.com
+49 30 346 497 85-0