Jay DeFeo: Mechanics
Coinciding with the sweeping retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, this exhibition aims to illuminate a new understanding of Jay DeFeo’s oeuvre through a focused examination of her exploration of the relationship between the mechanical, the animal and the transcendent.
Twenty-five works from the 1970s – paintings on paper, drawings, collages and various photo-based works, most never before exhibited – illustrate DeFeo’s musings on anthropomorphism, creation, and metaphysics. The works assembled in this exhibition provide new insight into DeFeo’s exploitation of the machine – an icon of twentieth-century Western culture – to explore the fundamental nature of being.
Throughout a career spanning nearly 40 years, Jay DeFeo (1929-1989) scrutinized objects from her daily life, then re-imagined them, often over and over again, in an effort to conceive new possibilities of seeing and achieve new depths of cognition. In a process akin to a metaphysical quest to grasp the nature of the universe, DeFeo frequently and repeatedly turned to various apparatuses for inspiration: a candlestick telephone, draftsman’s compass, photographer’s tripod, a scotch tape dispenser, a Eureka vacuum cleaner. She photographed, painted and drew them. She obliterated, cut up and cannibalized her representations. She abstracted them. She anthropomorphized them. She riffed on them. She teased historical and formal references from them. She animated them through an evolutionary methodology. Ultimately, she gave them life.
A major traveling retrospective of Jay DeFeo’s work, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, will open at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on November 3, 2012, and at the Whitney Museum in February 2013.
Jay DeFeo’s works are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum, Centre Pompidou, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Menil Collection and many others.
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Jay DeFeoUntitled 1973, 1973gelatin silver print6.625 x 6.25 inches/16.8 x 15.9 cms, Estate no. P0511a
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Jay DeFeoUntitled (for B.C.) E1327, 1973-4photo collage7 3/4 x 4 3/16 inches
framed: 20 3/4 x 16 3/4 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled E1735, 1974graphite and acrylic on rag board9 5/8 x 8 1/8 inches
framed: 20 5/8 x 16 5/8 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled E1734, 1974graphite, charcoal and acrylic on rag board8 x 7 inches
framed: 19 3/4 x 16 5/8 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled, 1973gelatin silver printimage 5 x 7 3/8 inches
sheet 5 x 8 inches
framed: 17 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled (Bruce Conner angel collage), c. 1975-6collage of photomechanical reproduction and gelatin silver print9 1/2 x 4 3/8 inches
framed: 19 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled (Bruce Conner angel collage), c. 1975-6collage of photomechanical reproduction and gelatin silver print9 1/2 x 4 inches
framed: 19 x 13 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled (Bruce Conner angel collage), c. 1975-6collage of photomechanical reproduction and gelatin silver print8 13/16 x 4 inches
framed: 19 x 13 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled E3292, 1973photo collage on paper11 7/8 x 9 inches
framed: 19 3/8 x 16 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled (Tripod series) E2134, 1976ink, graphite and acrylic on paper12 x 9 inches
framed: 20 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled (Tripod series) E2181, 1976ink, graphite and acrylic with collage on paper17 3/8 x 14 5/8 inches
framed: 25 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled (Tripod series) E2078, 1976acrylic and graphite on paper14 x 11 inches
framed: 23 5/8 x 20 1/8 inches -
Jay DeFeoWhite Knight E1451, 1977acrylic, graphite and charcoal with staple holes on paper39 7/8 x 30 3/8 inches
framed: 47 1/2 x 37 1/8 inches -
Jay DeFeoOracle (One O'clock Jump series), 1979acrylic, graphite and mixed media on paper40 x 30 inches/101.6 x 76.2 cm, Estate no. E3033
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Jay DeFeoUntitled (Jewelry series) E1516, 1977-78charcoal and acrylic on paper40 x 30 inches
framed: 48 1/2 x 38 inches
NFS -
Jay DeFeoUntitled (Jewelry series) E1053, 1976acrylic, charcoal and graphite on paper15 1/16 x 20 inches
framed: 22 1/4 x 26 3/4 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled (Jewelry series) E1199, 1977graphite and acrylic on paper29 x 23 1/4 inches
framed: 35 3/4 x 29 3/4 inches -
Jay DeFeoSamurai No. 1 E1071, 1987tempera, pastel and charcoal on ragboard16 x 13 1/4 in
40.6 x 33.7 cm
frame dim 25 1/4 x 21 7/8x 1 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled (Shoetree series) E1511, 1977graphite, charcoal and acrylic on paper40 x 30 1/4 inches
framed: 48 1/2 x 38 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled (Shoetree series), 1977graphite, acrylic and charcoal on paper15 15/16 x 13 inches
framed: 24 3/16 x 20 5/8 inches -
Jay DeFeoChiaro E1037, 1985oil and enamel on paper50 x 38 inches
framed: 55 1/2 x 43 5/8 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled, 1979color photocopy14 x 8 1/2 inches
framed: 18 1/6 x 12 1/2 inches -
Jay DeFeoUntitled, 1979color photocopy14 x 8 1/2 inches
framed: 18 1/6 x 12 1/2 inches