Jay DeFeo (31 March 1929 – 11 November 1989) was an American visual artist who became celebrated in the 1950s as part of the spirited community of Beat artists, musicians, and poets in San Francisco. Best known for her monumental work The Rose , DeFeo produced courageously experimental works throughout her career, exhibiting what art critic Kenneth Baker called “fearlessness.”
76-412: DeFeo is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Jay DeFeo (1929–1989), American artist Peter DeFeo (1902–1993), American mobster Ronald DeFeo Jr. (1951–2021), American mass murderer Ubi de Feo (born 1974), Italian educator Vincenzo De Feo (1876–1955), Italian admiral [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with
152-441: A Hasselblad camera and built a darkroom in her home, continuing to explore photography and photo collage for several years. "Untitled" (1973) is an example of a DeFeo photo collage in which she combines images of recognizable objects in surprising juxtapositions. In the late 1970s, DeFeo’s photography focused more on her work in progress in the studio, which evolved into a “visual diary” made of hundreds of contact sheets. During
228-647: A cartoonish style and dealing particularly with the escalation of the Vietnam War. Hedrick joined the Studio 13 Jazz Band in 1952. The group was founded at the San Francisco Art Institute in the late 1940s by two members of the Bay Area figurative painters David Park and Elmer Bischoff. He played the banjo. In 1953, one of the earliest paintings of his career as an artist presented
304-565: A crumpled American flag defaced with the word 'Peace'. Thomas E. Crow contrasts this work with Jasper Johns ’s "anonymous stenciling", drawing attention to the way Hedrick mimics the flamboyant calligraphy found in the decoration of hot-rod cars. Crow sees the work in contrast to Johns's reticence, as a protest aimed against the waste of lives in Korea, and at Cold War adventurism in general. Additionally, Peace (1953), "demonstrates an intuitive understanding of 'language as symbol' which predates
380-540: A dental bridge or swimming goggles, transforming the everyday into something with “universal character.” During the 1970s, DeFeo took a particular interest in photography. In 1970, a friend loaned her a Mamiya camera, and with the help of photography students in her art classes, she learned how to develop film and make prints. When DeFeo won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1973, she bought
456-467: A fake, a fraud running a scam.” "The opening night was the big thing in San Francisco. The opening night and all the artists, mainly artists, went out there and those few people that were into socialites or whatever they were, they went out. And then after that, you could go out there during a weekday and there would be nobody in the gallery. Nobody gave a damn." -- John Saccaro Made from what
532-484: A generic tissue box as her concrete starting-off point. In Africa, DeFeo climbed to the summit of Mount Kenya (more than 17,000 feet), realizing a long-held dream of climbing a major mountain. For years DeFeo taught art part-time at various Bay Area institutions, including the San Francisco Art Institute (1964–1971), the San Francisco Museum of Art (1972–1977), Sonoma State University (1976–1979),
608-461: A group exhibition, "Action", independently curated by Walter Hopps in Santa Monica, where the featured paintings were installed around the base of a working merry-go-round . Later that year, DeFeo and Hedrick moved to 2322 Fillmore Street, into a spacious second-floor flat, where DeFeo was able to work on a larger scale. The Fillmore Street building—whose inhabitants at various times included
684-570: A jazz combo performed: "That was his job. He made these paintings and while he would paint the musicians would play along with him. He would go like this and they would go doodoo doop. It was very popular in North Beach. The guy would make four or five paintings in an evening." Hedrick made an early break with the conventions of art training and art-making. "There were three directions an artist could take at that time," Hedrick says, "Figuration, Abstract-Expressionism. And this third thing, which
760-473: A moving van. The painting was taken to the Pasadena Art Museum (now called Norton Simon Museum ), where DeFeo added finishing details in 1966, before taking a four-year break from creating art. In 1969, the work was finally shown in solo exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA), with an accompanying essay by Fred Martin. Martin then arranged for
836-568: A private foundation, was established under the terms of DeFeo’s will to encourage the arts, preserve her works, and further their public exposure. Wally Hedrick Wally Bill Hedrick (1928 – December 17, 2003) was a seminal American artist in the 1950s California counterculture, gallerist, and educator who came to prominence in the early 1960s. Hedrick's contributions to art include pioneering artworks in psychedelic light art, mechanical kinetic sculpture, junk/assemblage sculpture, Pop Art, and (California) Funk Art. Later in his life, he
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#1732780612829912-580: A significant item of Bay Area art history. During this time, Hedrick was accused of stealing paintings, including a canvas by Clyfford Still , from the San Francisco Art Institute , where he was teaching, then either painting them black or painting his own iconoclastic pictures over them. In December 2008, Christopher Miles, art critic for the LA Weekly, nominated the War Room (exhibited at Mara McCarthy's The Box, March 21 - April 26, ) for Best Show of
988-758: A thread one can see running through the art of that time, especially on the West Coast . After receiving a BA and MA from UC Berkeley, DeFeo won the Sigmund Martin Heller Award which allowed her to travel to Europe in October of 1951. She lived in Paris and London, and then spent three months traveling through Europe, including Spain, Portugal, Italy and North Africa. Throughout her time in Europe she studied primitive painting and Renaissance art. By
1064-422: A timer so that the piece "suddenly began flashing its lights, honking its horns, and playing its records." One woman who was standing next to the piece when it suddenly turned on found her fur coat tangled in it and then received an electrical shock. "It caused quite a sensation not because of its artistic merit, but because it attacked this lady, which I thought was very nice... I wasn't making it as an art thing. I
1140-499: A ton. As she worked on it, DeFeo built up and then carved away at the paint, in an almost sculptural process. In the end a starburst motif emerged with ridges of white paint radiating out to rougher textured gray material sparkling with mica . The greater part of DeFeo’s work on The Rose terminated when she was evicted from her Fillmore Street apartment in November 1965. Her friend Bruce Conner stated that an “uncontrolled event”
1216-699: A traveling doctor for the Civilian Conservation Corps . Between 1935 and 1938, DeFeo traveled around rural parts of Northern California with her parents, and also spent extensive time with her maternal grandparents on a farm in Colorado as well as with her paternal grandparents in the more urban Oakland, California . When her parents divorced in 1939, DeFeo joined her mother in San Jose, California , where DeFeo attended Alum Rock Union School and excelled in art. In high school DeFeo acquired
1292-606: A younger man, and they eventually settled in Larkspur in Marin County. Separated from Bogdanoff and teaching at Mills College, she moved to Oakland in 1981 and built out a large live/work studio where she continued to expand on her ideas through painting, drawing, photocopy, and collage. Her life was filled with many good friends, inspiring students, and friendly dogs. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1988 but continued to work prolifically. She died on 11 November 1989, at
1368-520: Is "to take garbage and make it into art, kind of ironic art." He painted over the surfaces with thick layers of impasto and gesso which incorporated the work into the aesthetic of action painting. He was particularly pleased when he could fix an abandoned appliance sufficiently that at least some piece of it would work and he could turn his assemblages into moving sculptures. "Some of his most memorable sculptures came from crushing and welding beer cans together, or stacking and welding them...In 1956 he made
1444-582: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles Jay DeFeo Jay DeFeo was born Mary Joan DeFeo on 31 March 1929, in Hanover, New Hampshire , to a nurse from an Austrian immigrant family and an Italian-American medical student. In 1932, the DeFeo family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area , where her father graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and became
1520-1126: The Art Institute of Chicago , the British Museum , Centre Pompidou , the J. Paul Getty Museum , the Menil Collection , the Smithsonian American Art Museum , the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston , the Norton Simon Museum , the Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California, Berkeley , the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art , and the Mills College Art Museum . The Jay DeFeo Foundation,
1596-570: The California College of Arts and Crafts (1978–1981), and UC Berkeley (1980). She received her first full-time position at Mills College (1980–1989), where she eventually became the Lucie Stern Trustee Professor of Art. The 1965 eviction from Fillmore Street precipitated a breakup between Hedrick and DeFeo, culminating in divorce (1969). In 1967, she began a thirteen-year relationship with John Bogdanoff,
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#17327806128291672-683: The Korean War , Hedrick was drafted into the United States Army against his will, escorted away by US Army MPs without even having the chance to call his parents. "Wally must have been a problem for them, though, because Wally didn't ever do military things quite the way they intended...you told Wally not to do it, that's what he would do. He was stationed in Korea until 1952. During this time, his paintings and assemblages shifted from neo-cubism to metaphysics to political subjects painted in
1748-655: The Persian Gulf , Hedrick returned to making all-black paintings. On December 17, 2003, Hedrick died of congestive heart failure at his home in Sonoma County at the age of 75. "I can remember in about 1959 or '60, the joke going around the art school in the city was, 'A garage man had hauled away Hedrick's paintings and said, 'I don't know what art is.' We'd all laugh like mad, you know, 'cause most of us weren't sympathetic towards Wally Hedrick's art at that time." -- Terry St. John As early as 1963, John Coplans,
1824-490: The Persian Gulf War , slathering the older black paintings them with new statements in white acrylic paint like, "So damn, whose sane?". After 25 years, The War Room was brought out of storage to be the centerpiece for the 5th Annual San Francisco International Art Fair in 2003, courtesy of Lincart. The work was described as "the most topical thing on view." In 2003, with new American aggression taking place in
1900-449: The San Francisco Art Institute ) in 1946. During this period, he joined Progressive Art Workers with David Simpson , John Stanley and others. The Progressive Art Workers was a social club which also functioned as a co-operative through which the group the members were able to exhibit their works. At this time, too, Vesuvio Cafe in San Francisco's North Beach district hired Hedrick as an action painter to work (i.e. 'make paintings') while
1976-481: The Whitney Museum of American Art conserved and acquired the work for its collection. During her four decades of making art, DeFeo worked in a variety of media, creating drawings, paintings, sculpture, jewelry, photographs, photocopies, collages, and photo collages. Using an experimental approach to each medium, DeFeo developed her own “visual vocabulary,” playing with scale, color vs. black/white, texture or
2052-407: The surname DeFeo . If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DeFeo&oldid=1190412845 " Category : Surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description
2128-444: The 1980s DeFeo returned to oil paint, after working primarily in acrylic for a decade. In the summer of 1984, she traveled to Japan with her friend and fellow Mills College professor Mary-Ann Milford. This trip, along with an exhibit of Japanese helmets, inspired her 1987 Samurai drawing series. In the summer of 1987, DeFeo traveled to Africa, inspiring her to produce a series of abstract drawings called Reflections of Africa , using
2204-785: The Korean War, when he was given the task of fixing radios. His paintings of the 1970s were mainly crude black and white renditions of old mail order catalogue illustrations. It was also rumored he was the originator of the tag SKIDS which appeared on road signs in Northern California . He also put that in paintings later . In the 1980s he shifted to large-scale canvases of rough and aggressive imagery, often sexual." From 1988 to his death, Hedrick lived and worked in Bodega Bay , California , with his long-time companion, Catherine Conlin, for whom, WWW (a.k.a) Wiggy With Wings
2280-483: The Museum of Modern Art or even go to see the exhibition, he further distanced himself from the mainstream art world by declaring that artists such as Jackson Pollock , Franz Kline , and Robert Motherwell were too firmly rooted in formal traditions. Instead, Hedrick asserted, “You’ve got to have a deep sense of the human and you have to have a political stance. Painting is not above politics. Anything that has to do with
2356-488: The Six Gallery, when Allen Ginsberg , at Hedrick's invitation, read " Howl " for the first time. The event has become nearly as much a part of the city's mystique as the 1849 Gold Rush or the 1906 earthquake. Hedrick approached Ginsberg in mid-1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery. At first, Ginsberg refused, but once he'd written a rough draft of "How", he changed his mind. An account of
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2432-445: The Vietnam War. Hedrick took "about 50" of his early canvases and painted them black. Hedrick's Black Paintings culminate in 1967 with "War Room". This series "was an idiosyncratic protest, but a passionate one." War Room is "a group of four eleven-by-eleven foot black canvases, each filling a wall of the room" then arranged "into a square...in the shape of a room...and a door to go in it." The installation has been described as
2508-572: The Year (2008). Also, in December 2008, Walead Beshty, art critic for Artforum Magazine, nominated the War Room (exhibited at Mara McCarthy's The Box, March 21 - April 26) among the most notable Los Angeles exhibitions in 2008. In the early 1970s Hedrick was fired from a teaching post at the San Francisco Art Institute , after circulating a petition protesting America's presence in Vietnam. After
2584-703: The age of 60. The Whitney Museum of American Art , which holds the largest public collection of DeFeo’s work, presented a major retrospective from 28 February to 2 June 2013—also shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art . Subsequent solo exhibitions of DeFeo’s work have been held at Gagosian, San Francisco (2020); the San José Museum of Art (2019); Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York (2014 and 2018); Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Beverly Hills, CA (2016 and 2018); Galerie Frank Elbaz, in Dallas (2018) and Paris (2016), and Peder Lund, Oslo (2015), among others. In
2660-499: The beat poetry capital of the universe, but the visual artists who were part of the same epoch are less celebrated. The three-story building at 2322-24 Fillmore, where Hedrick and Jay DeFeo lived and worked was the unofficial center of the small San Francisco art world in 1955–65. Hedrick met artist Jay DeFeo , a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and they married in 1954. Jay DeFeo's best-known painting, "The Rose",
2736-424: The dismissal Hedrick began a period of self-imposed artistic exile, devoting most of his time to operating a home repair business (appropriately named, "Wally's Fix-It Shop") in the town of San Geronimo, California . This is an example of the way Hedrick "operates outside the busy highway of contemporary art". The small repair business proved moderately successful. Hedrick's repair skills were first recognized during
2812-568: The early 1950s. One of Hedrick's favorite beer can sculptures "was made up of smashed beer cans in a kind of pyramid, as sort of a mountain, so I called it American Everest ." The welded beer can sculptures "carried over until -- 1969." During the 1950s, Hedrick's efforts followed two main paths: painting and sculpture. More specifically, between 1952 and 1958, Hedrick begins his kinetic junk assemblages, beer can sculptures and 'Black Painting' series. Not only do Hedrick's junk kinetic beer can sculptures, now all lost or destroyed, possibly rank as
2888-445: The first light sculpture that I had ever seen; a fixture that responded to sound. Later on he had the piece on at his house during a Christmas celebration for which Wally put on some Miles and Coltrane on and the sculpture went crazy! I also remember his assemblage Xmas Tree Sculpture, that lit up and danced!" Although using beer cans was popularized in 1960 by Jasper Johns , Hedrick began the practice in art many years earlier, during
2964-408: The form of male and female genitalia perpetrating the deed." In 1959, both Hedrick and DeFeo became original members of Bruce Conner 's Rat Bastard Protective Association . Hedrick and DeFeo's apartment lease at 2322 Fillmore was suddenly terminated (due in part to DeFeo's excesses) toward the end of 1965. Hedrick and DeFeo divorced in 1969. The Black Paintings were Hedrick's protest against
3040-438: The future editor of Artforum Magazine (January 1972–January 1977), would confess the "fashionable world of contemporary painting" (i.e. East Coast) unpleasant reaction to the independent, offensive, 35-year-old Hedrick: "there is little doubt that Hedrick is an original, yet the fashionable world of contemporary painting tends to reject Wally Hedrick's work out of hand." Its no surprise, therefore, “the pathos of Hedrick’s situation
3116-400: The illusion of texture, and precision vs. ambiguity. She wrote, “I do believe that more so than most artists, I maintain a kind of consciousness of everything I’ve ever done while I’m engaged on a current work.” DeFeo often made her artwork in series, exploring, for example, light and dark versions, as well as mirror opposites. At times her artwork took off from a small quotidian object, such as
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3192-605: The importance of being on hand for the opening, gave his plane ticket for the New York museum exhibition and spectacle to friends, rather than participate. It would be 25 years before Hedrick figured prominently again in New York City , during the Whitney Museum of American Art ’s, Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965 exhibition in 1995. Not only did Hedrick not attend the 1959 Sixteen Americans opening at
3268-517: The label “conceptual art” entered the art world, and experimented with innovative use of language in art, at times resorting to puns. Wally Hedrick was born in Pasadena, California . He came out of the military and car culture , first glimpsing the liberating promise of San Francisco bohemia in the late 1940s, then moving to the city permanently after seeing combat in the Korean War (1950–1953). Hedrick visited California School of Fine Arts (now
3344-477: The late 1940s he experimented with light. By 1953 he had created a “light machine” that combined keyboard, glass, speakers, and homemade projectors and colored lights that responded to changes in pitch, register, and volume, which was an early precursor of the psychedelic light shows of the '60s —and years before the light shows of Haight-Ashbury . Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead studied with Wally Hedrick and Elmer Bischoff at San Francisco Art Institute . It
3420-479: The location of the King Ubu Gallery, which had been run by Jess [Collins] and Robert Duncan . Joan Brown, Manuel Neri , and Bruce Conner would become associates of The 6 Gallery. DeFeo was present when Allen Ginsberg first read his poem Howl at the famous The 6 Gallery reading in 1955. In 1959, DeFeo became an original member of Bruce Conner’s Rat Bastard Protective Association. In 1959, DeFeo
3496-407: The members and a meeting place for poets and literati alike. "The Six" was a focal point for countercultural activity during a crucial transition point—unconventional artists were deep underground—partly because no audience encouraged them to emerge, partly because it was safer there. "The Six" delighted at the chance to defy authority. As the gallery director, Hedrick organized and participated in
3572-642: The nickname “Jay,” which she used as her common name for the rest of her life. An important early mentor was her high school art teacher, Lena Emery, who took her to museums to see works by Picasso and Matisse , opening up a new world to the young artist. DeFeo enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley , in 1946, studying with many well-known art professors, including Margaret Peterson O’Hagan . Fellow students included Pat Adams , Walter Askin , Sam Francis , and Fred Martin . In her artwork, she resisted what she called "the hierarchy of material", using plaster and mixing media to experiment with effects,
3648-682: The night can be found in Jack Kerouac 's novel The Dharma Bums , where he describes collecting change from each audience member to buy jugs of wine with Hedrick. Hedrick's 'Six Gallery Reading' was the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation and helped to herald the West Coast artistic revolution that became known as the San Francisco Renaissance . In the late 1950s, San Francisco became
3724-417: The painting to be installed on the wall of a conference room at the San Francisco Art Institute . In 1973, concerned that The Rose was not well protected, DeFeo arranged for a conservator to begin stabilizing the painting, a project which could not be completed fully because of a lack of funds. Afterwards, a wall was built in front of the painting to help keep it safe. It remained hidden there until 1995, when
3800-611: The present postmodern use (of language) by twenty years. Hedrick’s pre-pop paintings were included in John Coplan’s historical “Pop Art, USA," the first exhibition to attempt a collective look at the movement in the United States, presented at the Oakland Art Museum during September, 1963. Even after his Pop Art phase, Hedrick continued "his risk-taking forays into regions where, mostly, angels fear to tread". In
3876-430: The rise of New York Pop Art . John Coplans included Hedrick's use of popular imagery in 1951 in his timeline of the antecedents to Pop Art. Hedrick "began painting flags in the 1950s, before New York's Jasper Johns did. Soon after, Hedrick -- ever the anti-careerist -- painted many of those flags black to protest the Vietnam War." In the early 1950s, Vesuvio Cafe , a popular Beat hangout, employed Hedrick to sit in
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#17327806128293952-614: The seminal "kinetic junk sculptures...made before Tinguely", but also, Hedrick is one of the first American artists to oppose US intervention in South Vietnam. Some artists at the time considered Hedrick a 'pre-conceptualist': "Wally's mind, I think... is of primary significance in this way. I think he's much more a preconceptualist than perhaps any of the others... the paintings, and the objects that he created are really more expressions of an idea." Indeed, Marcel Duchamp "was one of Wally's greatest gods, always." In 1951, during
4028-405: The seminal visual artists in the 1950s in San Francisco, including Hedrick, shunned the ‘beatnik’ label. None of them liked being called “Beats” and they especially abhorred the label “Beatniks”, a sobriquet of disparagement coined by San Francisco's famed columnist Herb Caen . As Bruce Conner stated: “I don’t know any artist that would call himself a beat artist…If somebody did, you’d consider him
4104-465: The soul also has to do with the stomach. In 1959, again recalling his Asian military experience, Hedrick painted "Anger" (or " Madame Nhu ’s Bar-B-Q"), the first artistic denunciation of American policy in Vietnam . Anger , visually equates an act of forceful sexual penetration with corrupt political manipulation. Explosive rage and indignation are symbolized by an atomic cloud serving double duty as
4180-444: The spontaneous exhibition/poetry reading/performance events that were the precursors of the 'Happenings' of the 1960s. "We didn't think of ourselves as a group. The other groups had a very strong group feeling, and they'd sit around and talk about taking over the world, or at least every art department in the Bay Area." In the wake of the artist collective galleries such as Ubu and Six came galleries run by professionals. "Hedrick
4256-649: The summer of 1952 she settled in Florence where she would begin an intense period of painting. In 1953 DeFeo returned to Berkeley, where she created large plaster sculptures, works on paper, and small wire jewelry. She met the artist Wally Hedrick and they married in 1954. At first they lived on Bay Street in San Francisco, close to the California School of Fine Arts , where DeFeo worked as an artist’s model. DeFeo focused on making jewelry to support herself, as well as creating small paintings and drawings. It
4332-408: The time, Hedrick was one of the first San Francisco artists in the early 1950s to work almost exclusively with metal. He began welding in 1952, and these efforts are considered the first kinetic-junk assemblages. Hedrick made assemblages and sculptures from beer cans, lights, broken radio and television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines he found in junkyards. "What interests me", he said later,
4408-516: The visual artists Sonia Gechtoff , Jim Kelly, Joan Brown , Craig Kauffman , John Duff, and Ed Moses ; the poets Joanna and Michael McClure ; and the musician Dave Getz —became a hangout for other artists, writers, and jazz musicians. The artist Billy Al Bengston remembers DeFeo as having “style, moxie, natural beauty and more ‘balls’ than anyone.” Hedrick, Deborah Remington , Hayward Ellis King , David Simpson , John Allen Ryan, and Jack Spicer founded The 6 Gallery at 3119 Fillmore Street, at
4484-522: The window dressed in full beard, turtleneck, and sandals and create improvisational drawings and paintings. Hedrick's figure, therefore, helped usher in the Beat lifestyle which ballooned in the later 1950s; by 1958 tourists to San Francisco could take bus tours to view the North Beach Beat scene. Although Hedrick once confided to Garcia that "he and his friends were the real Beat Generation",
4560-423: The window dressed in full beard, turtleneck, and sandals and create improvisational drawings and paintings. Hedrick's figure, therefore, helped ushered in the Beat lifestyle which ballooned in the later 1950s; by 1958 tourists to San Francisco could take bus tours to view the North Beach Beat scene. Hedrick once confided to his student Jerry Garcia that "he and his friends were the real Beat Generation." At
4636-983: The years since the seminal Sixteen Americans show, DeFeo’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, Paula Cooper Gallery (2021), The Menil Collection , Houston (2020), Addison Gallery of American Art , Andover, MA (2020), San Jose Museum of Art , San Jose (2020), Museum of Modern Art , New York (2019), The Anderson Collection at Stanford University (2019), The Getty Center , Los Angeles (2019), Tate Modern , London (2018), Secession, Vienna (2018), Victoria Miro Mayfair, London (2018), Le Consortium , Dijon (2018), Aspen Art Museum , Aspen, CO (2018), Musée National Picasso-Paris (2018), Mills College Art Museum , Oakland, CA (2018), Fraenkel Gallery , San Francisco (2018), CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts , San Francisco (2018), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017), Whitney Museum of American Art , New York (2017), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2017), and Centre Pompidou , Paris (2016). In 2016 her work
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#17327806128294712-481: The young Garcia on to acoustic blues and Jack Kerouac ’s On the Road and all its attendant attitudes. On the Road changed Garcia’s life forever. “Wally taught me that art is not only something you do, but something you are.” As "a genuine beatnik" Hedrick was employed at a 'beatnik' bohemian sitting at the bar at Vesuvio Cafe , a famous hangout in San Francisco's North Beach. Vesuvio Cafe employed Hedrick to sit in
4788-399: Was "sort of the pinnacle of the kinetic junk sculptures because I'd never attempted anything so complicated", built out of "two radios, two phonographs, flashing lights, electric fans, saw motor--all controlled by timers, hooked so [they] would cycle all these things." One of the record players played "I Hate to See Christmas Come Around". At the opening, which Hedrick refused to attend, he set
4864-603: Was a recognized forerunner in Happenings, Conceptual Art, Bad Painting , Neo-Expressionism, and image appropriation. Hedrick was also a key figure in the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation when he helped to organize the Six Gallery Reading , and created the first artistic denunciation of American foreign policy in Vietnam. Wally Hedrick was known as an “idea artist” long before
4940-492: Was during this time that DeFeo had her first one-person exhibition at The Place, a San Francisco tavern and poets’ hangout. DeFeo also exhibited her jewelry at Dover Galleries in Berkeley, and was included in many group exhibitions over the next few years. Early in 1955, DeFeo was featured— along with Julius Wasserstein, Roy De Forest , Sonia Gechtoff , Hassel Smith , Paul Sarkisian, Craig Kauffman , and Gilbert Henderson—in
5016-808: Was included in Dorothy Canning Miller ’s seminal exhibition Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, alongside Jasper Johns , Ellsworth Kelly , Robert Rauschenberg , Frank Stella , and Louise Nevelson , among others. Following this she had a solo exhibition in Los Angeles at the Ferus Gallery , started by Walter Hopps and Ed Kienholz. DeFeo’s best-known painting, The Rose (1958–1966) preoccupied her for almost eight years. Selected by Thomas Hoving for his book Greatest Works of Art of Western Civilization , this masterwork stands over 3.2 meters tall and weighs over
5092-682: Was included in the exhibition Women of Abstract Expressionism organized by the Denver Art Museum . In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. In addition to the Whitney Museum of American Art, DeFeo’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art , the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art ,
5168-570: Was instrumental in transforming the cheery satire of Pop Art into the more outrageous bite of funk art." The birth of 'California Funk Art' can be found at the Six Gallery. Robert Arneson , the so-called "Father of the Ceramic Funk Art movement". considered Hedrick, "The Godfather of Funk Art". Hedrick received his B.F.A. in Art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1955. "The Six Gallery reading " took place on October 7, 1955, at
5244-473: Was known as the King Ubu Gallery ("an all poet thing"), in 1954, Hedrick co-founded The Six Gallery in San Francisco , California with David Simpson , Hayward Ellis King , John Allen Ryan , Deborah Remington and Jack Spicer —and by 1955, had "become the official director". Although "the activities of the "6" were poorly documented", the Six Gallery functioned as an underground art gallery for
5320-404: Was like a cart (with a cane on it). -- Bruce Conner 'The Christmas Tree' was supposed to have something to do with playing colors by light, but it was totally random as far as I could tell, just absurd. -- Bruce Conner In 1958 one of his mechanical assemblages "attacked" a woman at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 's annual Christmas party and holiday exhibition. His "Xmas Tree"
5396-415: Was made in their Filmore Street apartment, took almost eight years to create and weighs 2,300 pounds, all paid for by her husband, Wally Hedrick. When I arrived in San Francisco in 1957, I remember going to The Place at North Beach with Michael McClure . There was this assemblage by Wally Hedrick in the window. I think it was part of a stovepipe, there was a doll's head in the vent, and it had wheels; it
5472-431: Was more interested in making a "thing", and if it attacked people—well I guess I knew it was going to attack...I knew it would probably attack because I laid the trap. So it entertained me; I thought the evening was a success." In 1955, art curator Dorothy Miller came to the West Coast. She included Hedrick in the 1959 Sixteen Americans show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City , NY. Hedrick, knowing full well
5548-400: Was necessary to force her to finish this work, and he documented its removal from her apartment in a short film titled The White Rose (1967). As the film shows, the painting was so large that the wall below a window opening was cut out to allow the painting's removal. Conner captured DeFeo dangling her feet from a fire escape as she watched the work being removed by forklift and carried off in
5624-445: Was out of the surrealist and Dada tradition." Hedrick began "working out a form of personalized Dada", which led "perhaps to his most influential contribution to the course of Bay Area art: an elaborate kind of punning. The puns not only became titles...but appeared in the painting itself." Hedrick's mature artistic career began with paintings of popular imagery—American flags, radios, television cabinets and refrigerators—years before
5700-510: Was painted. went on to paint and practice conceptual art and continued the tradition of making "bad art" in the form of music, when in the gestation period of nine months, she led her band, Bedtime Story, in releasing Dream Therapy, an album West Coast Performer Magazine dubbed "the worst album of the year", a title Conlin proudly touts to this day. Hedrick recycled the Black paintings -- recycling being another recurring theme in his work -- during
5776-496: Was the only school Garcia would ever be proud of attending. Hedrick served Garcia as a model not only as a painter but as an expositor of a way of life. To Garcia, Hedrick was a genuine beatnik. Hedrick thought Garcia bright and hip, and advised Garcia to attend poetry readings at the North Beach coffee houses, such as the Co-Existence Bagel Shop, the social centre of the Beat community. It was Hedrick who turned
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