In the first West Coast exhibition of Jay DeFeo's art in fifteen years, Hosfelt Gallery presents a focused investigation of some of the formal and metaphoric themes that run through various bodies of work made in the two decades between the completion of her legendary painting The Rose and her death in 1989.
The exhibition includes approximately 40 works, including paintings, drawings and unique photographic-based works, many of which have never previously been exhibited
Painter, photographer, teacher, her magnum opus was the behemoth, 3,000 pound "The Rose" which ended up on the Whitney. Eleven feet high, eight feet wide and eight inches thick, it took six years to paint, from 1958 to 1964.
As the late critic Thomas Albright wrote of The Rose, "It was a product of that heroic swan-song period in the early 1960's when Abstract Expressionism was moving in the direction of more specific imagery."
"The Rose" so drained her that she stopped painting for a while. When she resumed her work, DeFeo produced hundreds of drawings, paintings, and photo collages that range from organic abstractions to still lifes based on prosaic objects,
"I liken certain symbol shapes to what I call 'my visual vocabulary' and these shapes I respond to, wherever I find them, regardless of subject matter," DeFeo wrote. The current show at Hosfelt Gallery howcases that philosophy.
The success of the works displayed at Hosfelt speak to her skill with understatement, restraint and the sureness of brush stroke, the mark of graphite on paper.
It is as if making "The Rose" purged her of the compulsion to make massive paintings and lead her to the discovery, again so beautifully displayed at Hosfelt, that an artist can be powerful without crushing the viewer with size.
She never rejected the experimental and imaginative, continuing to move freely between drawing, painting, photography and collage. For instance, photocopies of a compass were manipulated to create a series, each piece a distinctive statement.
While most of the pieces in the show are her smaller works, several larger paintings showcase DeFeo's painterly technique.
The bold stokes in black, white and gray prove that nobody would beat DeFeo in getting color out of a severely restricted palate. The brush work takes on an organic, cosmic quality - tentacles, a river, a glimpse of the void.
The photographs on display are also a revelation of DeFeo's skill in the medium. They demonstrate the artist's interest in the combination of organic and mechanical materials. Like all her work, they are fraught with psychological depth and personal meaning.
Her imaginative craft turns even everyday objects, like the compass or a crumpled piece of paper into mysterious, haunting objects.
For much of her career DeFeo was haunted by a William Blake poem, which seems a fitting touchstone for viewers of this exhibition as well: "If you have formed a Circle to go into, go into it yourself & see how you would do." 1
If it were possible, I would return to this work again and again, to savor her subtle complexity, to enter, as much as anyone can, into the the center of DeFeo's circle.
DeFeo is finally getting her due. The current show at Hosfelt is an appetizer for the larger retrospective that will open at SFMOMA in the autumn of 2012.
Jay DeFeo” @ Hosfelt Gallery through October 22, 2011.
All images: ©2011 The Jay DeFeo Trust/Artists Rights Society/ARS, New York
More images at: http://cheznamastenancy.blogspot.com/
Thanks to Hosfelt Gallery for providing the images
1. quote from I Should Go to the Very Center
by Dana Miller, Catalogue for the exhibition Jay DeFeo: No End : Works on Paper from the 1980s, Botanicals: Photographs from the 1970s, August-September 2006
Hosfelt Gallery
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11:00-5:30
Location: 430 Clementina Street, between Howard and Folsom, and 5th and 6th Streets, south of Market Street. Clementina is a one-way street; enter off of 6th Street.
Parking: available on the street or in the lot directly across the street (lot entrances on 5th Street and Folsom).
BART/Muni: to Powell Street, walk south on 5th, right on Clementina.
hosfelt gallery
430 Clementina Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-495-5454
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