CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/31/2024

Behold the photographic work of Jay DeFeo, born OTD in 1929

Featured spreads are from staff favorite Jay DeFeo: Photographic Work, published by DelMonico Books and the Jay DeFeo Foundation. Collecting almost 200 photo collages, photograms, photographs and photocopies—many published here for the first time—by the legendary Bay Area artist, this beautifully produced hardcover features writing by an all-star cast including Leah Levy, Judith Delfiner, Corey Keller, Justine Kurland, Dana Miller, Catherine Wagner and Hilton Als, who writes, “And what would we do without Jay DeFeo, who is only partly alive because she dares us to look at the work and make sense of that sofa covered in netting, or the empty picture frame with the broken wire, or the telephone with the white bulb that burns brightly in the imagination? What can any of these images mean? Are they images of DeFeo’s idea of sculpture, or sculptural elements? What can she mean by those teeth, that shoe? Let us enter her pictures subtly and swiftly together and take from them what we will, freely, as we revel in the eye of DeFeo the beholder. Behold.”