In 1965, Jay DeFeo (1929–89) was evicted from her San Francisco apartment, along with the 2,000-pound colossus of a painting for which she would become legendary, The Rose. The morning after it was carried out the front window, DeFeo was forced to destroy the only other artwork she’d started in six years, an enormous painting on paper stapled directly to her hallway wall. The unfinished Estocada—a kind of shadow Rose—was ripped down in unruly pieces and reanimated years later in her studio through photography, photocopy, collage and relief. Drawing from largely unpublished archival material, Rip Tales traces for the first time Estocada’s material history, interweaving it with stories about other Bay Area artists—Zarouhie Abdalian, April Dawn Alison, Ruth Asawa, Lutz Bacher, Bruce Conner, Dewey Crumpler, Trisha Donnelly and Vincent Fecteau—that likewise evoke themes of transformation, intuition and process. Foregrounding a Bay Area ethos that could be defined by its resistance to definition, Rip Tales explores the unpredictable edges of artworks and ideas.
Published by Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Edited by Cassandra Lozano, Kevin Choe, Anna Drozda. Text by Dana Miller.
Published for an exhibition of paintings, photographs, collages and works on paper by Jay DeFeo (1929–89), this catalog features full-color reproductions and an introductory essay highlighting DeFeo’s surrealist sensibility in her juxtaposition of forms, mixing of genres and experimentation with chance.
Published by Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Text by Walead Beshty.
Published on the occasion of Jay DeFeo's (1929–89) first exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash featuring 50 key works spanning the years 1965–89, this volume examines DeFeo's distinctive exploration of visual vocabulary, rich materiality and experimental process across the mediums of painting, drawing, photography and rarely seen photocopy works. The catalogue features two double-page spreads of major paintings: "Lotus Eater" from 1974 and "Tuxedo Junction" from 1965/74, the latter having the distinction of being one of the only remaining works which DeFeo worked on while she worked on "The Rose." The essay by Los Angeles–based artist Walead Beshty focuses on the handful of forms and objects that appear and reappear in DeFeo's work, accruing meaning incrementally over time.
This new monograph on Jay DeFeo (1929–1989) focuses on her late work, the paintings of the 1980s as well as the exceptional corpus of drawings of the 1980s and her photographic oeuvre of the 1970s. It thus complements the book published on the occasion of her Whitney Museum retrospective in 2013. DeFeo was part of a vibrant community of avant-garde artists, poets and musicians in San Francisco during the 1950s and 1960s. Her circle included Wallace Berman, Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Wally Hedrick, Edward Kienholz and Michael McClure. Although best known for her monumental painting "The Rose" (1958–1966), DeFeo worked in a wide range of media and produced an astoundingly diverse and compelling body of work over four decades. Her unconventional approach to materials and her intensive, physical method made her a unique figure in postwar American art.
Outrageous Fortune: Jay DeFeo and Surrealism
Jay DeFeo
Jay DeFeo: Chiaroscuro