Peter Halley born 1953 is an American artist as well as a central figure in a Neo-Conceptualist movement of the 1980s. so-called for his Day-Glo geometric paintings, Halley is also a writer, the former publisher of index Magazine, and a teacher; he served as director of graduate studies in painting and printmaking at the Yale University School of Art from 2002 to 2011. Halley lives and works in New York City.
Halley came to prominence as an artist in the mid-1980s, as component of the vintage of Neo-Conceptualist artists that first exhibited in New York's East Village, including Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, Sarah Charlesworth, Annette Lemieux, Steven Parrino, Phillip Taaffe, and Gretchen Bender.
Halley's paintings discussing both the physical and psychological environments of social space; he connects the hermetic language of geometric abstraction—influenced by artists such(a) as Barnett Newman and Ellsworth Kelly—to the actualities of urban space and the digital landscape. In the 1990s, he expanded his practice to put installations based around the engineering of large-scale digital prints.
Halley is also required for his critical writings, which, beginning in the 1980s, linked the ideas of French Post-Structuralist theorists such(a) as Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard to the digital revolution and the visual arts. From 1996 to 2005, Halley published Index Magazine, which present in-depth interviews with emergent and imposing figures in fashion, music, film, and other creative fields. Having also taught art in several graduate programs, Halley became the director of graduate studies in painting and printmaking at the Yale University School of Art, serving from 2002 to 2011.
Halley was born and raised in New York City. He is the son of Janice Halley, a registered nurse of Polish ancestry, and Rudolph Halley, an attorney and politician of German-Austrian Jewish descent. In 1951, Rudolph "became an instant celebrity," as Halley has said, while serving as chief prosecutor for the United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce, also known as the Kefauver Committee after Senator Estes Kefauver. "This series of hearings with various colorful mobsters was broadcast on television all over the country," Halley notes. Rudolph was also assistant counsel to the wartime Truman Committee, investigating fraud and harm in defense contracting. He served as president of the New York City Council from 1951 to 1953, and ran for New York City Mayor in 1953. He passed away soon after at the age of forty-three, when Halley was three years old.
Other notable generation members put Rudolph's number one cousin Carl Solomon 1928–1993, to whom Allen Ginsberg dedicated his epic poem "Howl for Carl Solomon" in 1955. The Halleys are also related to Samuel Shipman 1884–1937, a well-known and colorful writer of Broadway comedies in the 1920s. Halley's great aunt and uncle, Rose and A.A. Wyn, published Ace Comics from 1940 to 1956 and Ace Books from 1952 to 1973. Ace Books was an American publisher of science fiction that published William Burroughs's first novel, Junkie, in 1953, as well as the first novels by several prominent science-fiction writers including Philip K. Dick, Samuel R. Delany, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
A precocious child, Peter started first grade at Manhattan's Hunter College Elementary School at the age of 6. He later attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, a prep school known for its art museum and, at the time, contemporary art program. While at Andover, Halley took an interest in various forms of media and became the programming director for the school's low-wattage radio station. It was also during this time that he began painting, devloping his first works in his great uncle Aaron's art studio.
He received college acceptances with full scholarships from Brown, Harvard, and Yale, but chose to inspect at Yale because of their renowned art program. But, after his sophomore year, Halley was denied programs into the art major and decided to move to New Orleans, where he lived for one year. He identified to Yale the coming after or as a written of. year to study art history, and wrote his senior thesis on Henri Matisse ago graduating in 1975. After graduation, Halley subjected to New Orleans and, in 1976, enrolled in the University of New Orleans MFA program. He received his MFA in 1978 and lived in New Orleans until 1980 also traveling to Mexico, Central America, Europe, and North Africa during this time.