(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Friends and colleagues of performance artist William Pope, known as Pope.L, are mourning after he died unexpectedly in his Chicago home over the weekend. He was 68.
Pope.L was best known for his "crawls," as he called them
Over a period of many years, he would crawl through the streets of Manhattan, once in a superman costume, once in a business suit.
"I thought it would be an interesting sight to do a work that didn't require language," he said. "It just required an action, a simple action, and that was simply to crawl."
That excerpt was from a video put together by New York's Museum of Modern Art, which documented his crawls.
He explored themes that included race and class. His work included photography, painting, sculpture, performance and theater.
In a statement, his gallery Modern Art told the Guardian: "Pope.L fundamentally challenged and changed the last 50 years of visual art in the United States."
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