Extended through December 11, 2020
Works Exhibited
About
I’ve always got to get down there and show what is underneath everything.
—Jay DeFeo
Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings, photographs, and works on paper from the 1970s by Jay DeFeo (1929–1989), organized in association with the Jay DeFeo Foundation.
DeFeo produced a diverse body of innovative work that continues to inspire artists today. The fusion of painting and sculpture found in her masterpiece The Rose (1958–66) has led to international acclaim. First exhibited in 1969, this gigantic impasto canvas spent decades behind a false wall awaiting conservation before being acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1995. The present exhibition focuses on the artist’s output in the decade following the completion of that pivotal work, when she was based in Larkspur, Marin County.
In 1951, DeFeo traveled in Europe and North Africa before returning to California, where she became an active participant in San Francisco’s thriving Beat scene. After largely withdrawing from the art world during the eight years she spent working on The Rose, she then took a three-year creative hiatus. During the two decades that followed, she made a significant number of paintings, drawings, collages, and photographs that trace a route beyond the formalist approach of many of her contemporaries and toward a more fluid, dynamic creative vision.
#JayDeFeo
Jay DeFeo’s Transcendent Objects
Alice Godwin explores the shifts in Jay DeFeo’s practice in the 1970s, considering the familiar objects that became recurrent subjects in her work during these years and their relationship to the human body.
Jay DeFeo
Suzanne Hudson speaks with Leah Levy, executive director of the Jay DeFeo Foundation, about the artist’s life and work.
News
In Conversation
Jay DeFeo’s Generation
Suzanne Hudson, Dana Miller, and Clifford Ross
Tuesday, November 17, 2020, 2pm EST
Join Gagosian for a conversation on Jay DeFeo with Los Angeles–based art historian and critic Suzanne Hudson, Seattle-based art historian and independent curator Dana Miller, and New York–based artist Clifford Ross. The trio will discuss the unique place DeFeo occupies in art history, shaped by a diverse body of work that defies categorization, a practice situated outside of the American art centers of New York and Los Angeles, and relationships with other artists of her generation. To join, register at zoom.us.
Jay DeFeo, Lotus Eater No. 1, 1974 © 2020 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick
Launch
8-bridges
Gagosian will be participating in 8-bridges, a new online initiative created to highlight artists and galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area. Launching in October 2020, 8-bridges will present monthly exhibitions by Bay Area galleries, with a particular focus on artists and conversations relevant to the region. The platform will feature eight new presentations each month, and each cycle will also spotlight a local institution, starting with the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. Gagosian is pleased to be a member of the 8-bridges founding committee. The gallery’s inaugural presentation will be devoted to the work of Jay DeFeo.
Jay DeFeo on Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, California, 1973. Photo: John Bogdanoff
8-bridges
Jay DeFeo
October 1–31, 2020
I’ve always got to get down there and show what is underneath everything.
—Jay DeFeo
Gagosian is pleased to present works by Jay DeFeo on 8-bridges, a newly launched online platform created to highlight artists and galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area. Honoring the rich history of the Bay Area art scene, the inaugural presentation features selected works from the exhibition Transcending Definition: Jay DeFeo in the 1970s, on view at Gagosian, San Francisco, through December 11, 2020. DeFeo spent most of her life in the San Francisco Bay Area and remains an influential figure in the region. The 8-bridges presentation focuses on the artist’s output in the decade following the completion of her pivotal work The Rose (1958–66), when she was based in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. In her paintings, photographs, and works on paper of the 1970s, DeFeo fused the representational with the abstract, permeating her images of everyday objects—a camera tripod, a jewelry fragment, a shoe tree—with a sense of mystery. The artist described her works of this period as “beings suspended in space and time” that “transcend the definition of the literal objects from which they are derived.”
Jay DeFeo, Figure V (Tripod series), 1976 © 2020 The Jay DeFeo Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Robert Divers Herrick
