DeFeo, Conner papers add to Bancroft’s Beat collection
Q: What weighs over a ton, is 10 feet high, made of lead paint, and devours your life for eight years?
A: A rose.
Well, not any rose, but “The Rose,” a monumental painting which completely consumed Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo’s life and severely damaged her health just as she was on the cusp of national recognition as a leading figure in the San Francisco Beat scene.
DeFeo at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1981 |
Unfortunately, in her lifetime Jay
DeFeo never regained the same level of
prominence she enjoyed in the late
1950s and early ’60s—even being
chosen by President Kennedy to
represent the crème de la crème of
American creativity in the visual arts for
a pictorial article in Look Magazine.
But, since her death from cancer in
1989, her stature as one of California’s
leading post-war artists is being reexamined
in art historical circles. Previously
known as an interesting but minor Bay
Area painter, DeFeo is now being
recognized as an artist who helped
define her generation. |
Jay DeFeo working on an early version of The Rose, originally titled The Death Rose |
Recently, Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, declared Jay’s “The Rose” one of the 111 ‘greatest’ works of art in the history of Western civilization. Hoving describes “The Rose,” in his book Greatest Works of Art of Western Civilization, as “perhaps the single most expressive painting of the 1960s, and one of the most expressive statements in the entire last third of the twentieth century.”
The Estate of Jay DeFeo recently presented The Bancroft Library with the artist’s papers, including correspondence, pictorial material, film, and video. Most of the correspondence dates from the early 1970s until her death, and provides a fascinating record of her recovery from the mental and physical strain of creating “The Rose” and the subsequent rebuilding of her personal and artistic life.
Born in Hanover, N.H. in 1929, DeFeo and her family moved to the Bay Area when she was three. After high school in San Jose, she entered UC Berkeley, where she earned a BA (’50) and MA (’51) in Fine Arts. She then spent 15 months traveling in France, Spain, northern Africa, and Italy. She lived and painted in Florence for six months and there produced her first important body of work. Her correspondence with her mother from this seminal period is represented in the papers given to Bancroft.
Bruce Conner, 1995 |
Nearing her planned departure from Italy in the fall of 1952, Jay wrote her mother: “I’m staying 3 more months... it was a difficult choice for many reasons...Why I’m staying is simply that a little more time will allow me to finish the work I’ve been struggling so hard to accomplish—I guess you don’t know what it took out of me physically, mentally, emotionally—and to have to pack up at a time when I almost had it—was too much to bear.” Upon her return, DeFeo settled in San Francisco and soon became a major force in the lively Beat scene. She and her husband and fellow-artist, Wally Hedrick, turned their large Victorian flat at 2322 Fillmore Street into one of the major hot spots for bohemian creativity in the City. Poet Michael McClure and his wife, Joanna, lived downstairs. It was here that DeFeo created some of her most enduring works, including the fateful “The Rose,” which she began in 1958 and was forced to complete when she and Hedrick were evicted in 1965. |
Bruce Conner, artist and close personal friend of DeFeo, documented the removal of “The Rose” from Fillmore Street in his intimate and melancholy film, “The White Rose.” Conner, who still lives and works in San Francisco, recently gave Bancroft correspondence concerning his and DeFeo’s frustrated efforts to conserve and find a permanent home for her colossal masterpiece.
DeFeo in Larkspur in 1981 |
Conner’s small but richly detailed collection also includes the paint-encrusted reducing glass (the opposite of a magnifying glass) Jay used while working on “The Rose,” photographs documenting various stages of the painting’s development, photodocumentation of his own artworks— primarily assemblages from the 1950s and early ’60s and his haunting “Angel” series of photograms from the ’70s— and exhibition catalogs. Conner felt that it was appropriate Bancroft should have his correspondence and photos about Jay because of her alumna status at UCB, her role as an important Bay Area artist, and, as he stated, “knowing the Bancroft would take good care of these materials.” |
Following the physical and mental collapse she suffered from creating “The Rose,” DeFeo moved north to Larkspur and began to piece her artistic career back together. She joined the art faculty at Mills College in 1980, where she quickly gained a reputation as a committed and beloved teacher. It is sad to note that at the time of her death in 1989, DeFeo was poised to regain her once lofty stature in the art world. However, for artists working in the Bay Area, an aura of legendary greatness has always surrounded her.
Two Hands Angel by Bruce Conner from a copy photograph by Edmund Shea |
While organizing the Conner and DeFeo papers, some interesting questions have arisen for Bancroft archival assistants Lisa de Larios and Dean Smith. Some items in DeFeo’s correspondence are in the form of collaged postcards or photographs inscribed with notes or personal, cryptic messages. Does this make them manuscripts, or are they artworks? And how does the archivist preserve, house, yet make conveniently accessible such material? In a recent conversation, co-executor of the DeFeo Estate Leah Levy said she was “excited by the prospect of how these materials will reveal more information on Jay DeFeo as an artist, her process in creating her art, and the art itself.” Committed to preserving the heritage of the Beat movement and its profound legacy in the cultural history of San Francisco, The Bancroft Library is expanding its collection scope beyond such stellar literary figures as Robert Duncan, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Jack Spicer to include artists’ papers. This broader collection definition—to bring together again a circle of friends and colleagues—will offer a richer and more nuanced vision of cultural production on the West Coast during the Cold War era. Dean Smith is a Bancroft staff member |
Volume 112
Spring 1998
Table of Contents
DeFeo, Conner papers add to Bancroft’s Beat collection
From the Director: What does Bancroft collect?
The Digital Scriptorium
Towards a Renaissance in medieval manuscript studies
Robert Frost Collection includes photos inscribed by the poet
Bancroft Fellows research images of the American West, history of Mexico’s Cora Indians
Freshmen discover the wonders of Bancroft
Bancroft staffer in the spotlight
An Oral History of Jack Stauffacher From letterpress to computer-designed fine printing
Where is the last portrait of Mark Twain?
