William E. Jones: Urgency and Impermanence

William E. Jones is a writer, artist, and filmmaker with as wide a range of themes and influences in his oeuvre as mediums at his disposal. He’s never shied away from the personal, either, or from putting the spotlight on unsung (or undersung) figures in the art or literary worlds. With his most recent work, Fall into Ruin, he embraces both of these tendencies.

Fall into Ruin is a half-hour film, narrated by Jones himself, focusing on the Greek art collector Alexander Iolas (1907–1987), who gave Andy Warhol his first solo show in 1952, dealt in the works of the surrealists, and built a formidable home/gallery combination called Villa Iolas in a suburb of Athens. Jones had a life-changing interaction with Iolas when he was an undergraduate, and recently returned to Greece to survey what’s become of Villa Iolas.

After watching this hypnotic film several times from the comfort of my own home, I spoke with Jones about all things Iolas, the art world, and the many worlds Jones’s works inhabit.

First exhibited at the Modern Institute in Glasgow, Fall into Ruin will be showing at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles from July 15 to August 26, 2017.

—Jordan A. Rothacker for Guernica

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Still from "Fall into Ruin," 2017, high-resolution video, by William E. Jones. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Scotland.

Guernica: I’ve watched the film a few times now at home, without the context of a museum or gallery, but I really enjoyed it. How was its reception in Glasgow, at The Modern Institute?

I’m afraid I’m not very good at judging my own work’s reception; perhaps that’s better left to others anyway. I was ill when I came to Glasgow for the installation of the show, and I lost my voice. When it came time to give my artist’s talk, I did not have my full voice, and to my