DOCSLIB.ORG

Bruce Conner Photograph Collection, Circa 1935-Circa 2008

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Bruce Conner Photograph Collection, Circa 1935-Circa 2008 http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf887006qp Online items available Finding Aid to the Bruce Conner Photograph Collection, circa 1935-circa 2008 Processed by The Bancroft Library staff The Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-6000 Phone: (510) 642-6481 Fax: (510) 642-7589 Email: [email protected] URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ © 1997 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Finding Aid to the Bruce Conner BANC PIC 1997.069 1 Photograph Collection, circa 1935-circa 2008 Finding Aid to the Bruce Conner Photograph Collection, circa 1935-circa 2008 Collection number: BANC PIC 1997.069 The Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-6000 Phone: (510) 642-6481 Fax: (510) 642-7589 Email: [email protected] URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ Finding Aid Author(s): Processed by The Bancroft Library staff Date Completed: 1997 Finding Aid Encoded By: GenX © 2014 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Collection Summary Collection Title: Bruce Conner photograph collection Date (inclusive): circa 1935-circa 2008 Collection Number: BANC PIC 1997.069 Collector: Connor, Bruce Extent: 5 boxes and 9 oversize folders (ca. 925 photographic prints, ca. 100 xerographic prints and 10 slides), 2 boxes (ca. 350 negatives) and 25 negatives ; b&w and color; 48 x 34 cm or smaller.5 digital objects (5 images) Repository: The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-6000 Phone: (510) 642-6481 Fax: (510) 642-7589 Email: [email protected] URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ Abstract: Contains portraits, snapshots and professional photographs documenting the life, activities and artwork of Bruce Conner. Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English Physical Location: For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog. Access Information COLLECTION STORED, IN PART, OFF-SITE: Advance notice required for use. RESTRICTED NEGATIVES. Use of negatives only by permission of the appropriate curator. Inquiries regarding these materials should be directed, in writing, to the Head of Public Services, The Bancroft Library. Publication Rights Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Bruce Conner photograph collection, BANC PIC 1997.069, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley Finding Aid to the Bruce Conner BANC PIC 1997.069 2 Photograph Collection, circa 1935-circa 2008 Alternate Forms Available Digital reproductions of selected images are available. Related Material Bruce Conner correspondence concerning Jay DeFeo's "The Rose" (BANC MSS 98/32 c) Auerhahn Press records (BANC MSS 71/85 c) Bruce Conner papers (2005/50 c) Indexing Terms The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog Clements, Geoffrey Conner, Bruce, 1933-2008--Archives. Conner, Bruce, 1933-2008--Pictorial works DeFeo, Jay, 1929-1989--Pictorial works. Haller, Robert A. Hopper, Dennis, 1936-2010--Pictorial works. Keenan, Larry Kurz, Vivian--Pictorial works. McClure, Michael--Pictorial works. Shea, Edmund Art, American--California--20th century--Photographs Artists, 20th century--Photographs. Artists, American--Photographs. Series 1: transferred from the Bruce Conner correspondence concerning Jay DeFeo's "The Rose" (BANC MSS 98/32 c) with additions from the Auerhahn Press records (BANC MSS 71/85 c) and from the Bruce Conner papers (BANC MSS 2000/50 c). Series 2-4: transferred from later additions to the Bruce Conner papers received in 2011. Processing/Project Information Among 2011 additions, some material may duplicate that of earlier installments of the collection. Biography/Organization History Sculptor, filmmaker, collagist, painter, draftsman, photographer, conceptual artist. Born in McPherson, Kansas, in 1933, Bruce Conner spent his childhood and young adulthood in nearby Wichita. Upon graduating from Wichita High School East, Conner went on to study art at Wichita University and University of Nebraska, where he met his wife-to-be, Jean Sandstedt. He continued art studies at the Brooklyn Art School and the University of Colorado. In 1957, at the urging of his childhood friend, the poet Michael McClure, and attracted by stories of a vibrant art and literary scene that included visual artists Jay DeFeo, Joan Brown, and Jess, and poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, and Philip Lamantia, Conner and his wife, Jean, moved to San Francisco. He subsequently became a key figure in the city's legendary Beat community. After brief sojourns to Mexico City, 1961-1962, where his son, Robert was born, and Brookline, Massachusetts, 1963-1964, Conner resettled in San Francisco where he continued to live and work until his death. -Biographical note by Dean Smith, Bancroft Library Scope and Content Note Contains portraits, snapshots and professional photographs documenting the life, activities and artwork of Bruce Conner. Portraits depict Conner from childhood through his later years. Also depicted are family members, friends and associates, including his wife Jean, his son Robert, artist Jay DeFeo, poet Michael McClure, actor Dennis Hopper and friend Vivian Kurz. Many of his exhibitions are documented, as are numerous artworks. Also includes many film stills. In addition to photographs, the collection also includes several xerographic reproductions of Conner’s collages, drawings and other works. Collection includes work by numerous photographers, including Edmund Shea, Larry Keenan, Frank English, Robert A. Haller, Erni Burden and Geoffrey Clements. Collection does not include original artwork by Bruce Conner. Series 1: Photographs from early accessions Finding Aid to the Bruce Conner BANC PIC 1997.069 3 Photograph Collection, circa 1935-circa 2008 Series 1: Photographs from early accessions Photographs of Jay DeFeo's, "The Rose" Photographs of Jay DeFeo's, "The Rose" Shelving location: PIC box 1 box 1 Only known photograph of the "Death Rose" canvas being unstretched and prepared for gluing to larger canvas. ca. 1960? Inscribed, "Love Merz - 1972." BANC PIC 1997.069:001--PIC Additional Note l. to r.: Jean Conner (with glasses), Craig Kaufman, unidentified man. Photograph in very poor condition. Jay DeFeo working on early version of "The Rose." BANC PIC 1997.069:002--PIC ark:/28722/bk0013c9b04 Additional Note Inscribed recto: For Al and Lerine, Love J. Early version of "The Rose" mounted on Holiday greeting card sent to Bruce Conner, 1974?. BANC PIC 1997.069:003--PIC Press photograph of Jay DeFeo standing in front of an early version of "The Rose." Photograph by Marty Sacco, San Francisco Examiner, December 6, 1961. BANC PIC 1997.069:004--PIC Additional Note Original negative housed in the Fang Family San Francisco Examiner photograph archive negative files, BANC PIC 2006.029:137450.05.05--NEG. Final version of "The Rose." Photograph by Frank J. Thomas. inscribed on verso, "The Rose" a painting by Jay DeFeo; the subject of a film by Bruce Conner: "The White Rose," 16mm, B+W, SD., 7 min. BANC PIC 1997.069:005--PIC Final version of "The Rose." Photograph by Frank J. Thomas. inscribed on verso, "The Rose" a painting by Jay DeFeo; photo at Pasadena Art Museum Show. BANC PIC 1997.069:006--PIC Final version of "The Rose." Photograph by Edmund Shea, 1973. BANC PIC 1997.069:007--PIC Detail of the final version of "The Rose." Photograph by Edmund Shea, 1973. BANC PIC 1997.069:008--PIC Detail of the final version of "The Rose." Photograph by Edmund Shea, 1973. BANC PIC 1997.069:009--PIC Detail of the final version of "The Rose." Photograph by Edmund Shea, 1973. BANC PIC 1997.069:010--PIC Misc. photographs of Jay DeFeo, her artwork, and source material for artworks Shelving location: PIC box 1 box 1 Copy print of Jay DeFeo's baby photograph mounted on cardboard. inscribed, "Hi Bruce - love from Mt. Olympus. love, J. Defango." BANC PIC 1997.069:011--PIC Copy print of Jay DeFeo as a child with dog. inscribed, "I am feeling better as you can see!! Can you come and play next Friday?? Your friend, J.D." BANC PIC 1997.069:012--PIC Photograph of original drawing "After Image" by Jay DeFeo. 1972. BANC PIC 1997.069:013--PIC Copy print of original photographic collage by Jay DeFeo. inscribed, "Happy Birthday, Telephone." November 1973. BANC PIC 1997.069:014--PIC Photograph of snake. inscribed, "rope trick." December 1973. BANC PIC 1997.069:015--PIC Finding Aid to the Bruce Conner BANC PIC 1997.069 4 Photograph Collection, circa 1935-circa 2008 Series 1: Photographs from early accessions Misc. photographs of Jay DeFeo, her artwork, and source material for artworks Photograph of painting in progress by Jay DeFeo. inscribed, "I.O.U. $2.50." May 1974. BANC PIC 1997.069:016--PIC Photograph of painting in progress by Jay DeFeo. inscribed, "I still owe you $2.50." May 29, 1974. BANC PIC 1997.069:017--PIC Copy print of a child sitting on a bench. Inscribed, "Art in Palo Alto." May 30, 1974. BANC PIC 1997.069:018--PIC Photograph of antique telephone. BANC PIC 1997.069:019--PIC Portrait of Jay DeFeo in her studio/home in Oakland, California. Christmas, 1981. BANC PIC 1997.069:020--PIC Copy photographs of Bruce Conner's "Angel" photograms Shelving location: PIC box 1 box 1 "Departing Angel," 1973. Copy photograph by Edmund Shea. BANC PIC 1997.069:021--PIC "House of Two Hand Angel," 1973. Copy photograph by Edmund Shea. BANC PIC 1997.069:022--PIC "Bowing Angel," 1973. Copy photograph by Edmund Shea.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • William T. Wiley
    WILLIAM T. WILEY BORN Bedford, Indiana, October 21, 1937. EDUCATION Studied at the San Francisco Art Institute 1962 M.F.A 1961 B.F.A. TEACHING 1968 University of Colorado at Boulder 1968 Visiting Artist, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 1968 School of Visual Art, New York 1967 University of California at Berkeley 1967 Washington State College, Pullman 1967 University of Nevada at Reno 1963, 66-67 San Francisco Art Institute 1962-73 Associate Professor, University of California at Davis AWARDS 2011 Honoree at the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 2010 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art “Bay Area Treasure Award” 2009 California Society of Printmakers, Honorary Membership 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award in Printmaking from the Southern Graphics Art Council. 2004 Robert & Happy Doran Artist in Residency Fellowship, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT 2004 Life Work Award, Marin Arts Council 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship Award 1991 Recipient of Honor and Awards, American Academy of Letters and Arts, New York, New York. 1980 Honorary Doctorate, S.F.A.I., San Francisco, CA 1980 Traveling Grant to Australia, Australian Arts Council 1976 Bartels Prize, 72nd American Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago 1968 Purchase Prize, Whitney Museum, New York 1968 Nealie Sullivan Award, San Francisco Art Institute 1962 Painting Prize, 65th Annual Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago 1962 Sculpture Prize, Los Angeles County Museum of Art 1961 New Talent Award, Art In America, 1961 1959 Painting Prize, San Francisco Art Institute 300 Crescent Court, Suite 100 Dallas, Texas 75201 bivinsgallery.com 214.272.2795 [email protected] THE TOWER 1985 to 1991 William T.
    [Show full text]
  • Bruce Conner (1933 – 2008)
    BRUCE CONNER (1933 – 2008) BORN: McPherson, Kansas EDUCATION: 1956 B.F.A., Nebraska University 1956 Brooklyn Museum Art School 1957 University of Colorado SOLO EXHIBITIONS: 2012 Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CA Bruce Conner and the Primal Scene of Punk Rock, MCA Denver, Denver, CO 2011 Bruce Conner: An Anonymous Memorial, American University, Katzen Arts Center, Washington D.C. Bruce Conner: Falling Leaves: An Anonymous Memorial, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY 2010 Bruce Conner: 1970’s, Kunstalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (travelled to Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland) I am Not Bruce Conner, Ursula Blickle Foundation, Krachtal, Germany Bruce Conner, Inova/Kenilworth Institute, University of Wisonsin, Milwaukee, Peck School of the Arts 4 ½, Creative Time, New York, NY Long Play: Bruce Conner and the Singles Collection, SFMOMA, San Francisco The Late Bruce Conner, Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, NY 2009 Bruce Conner: Discovered, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CA Bruce Conner in the 1970s, Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Intelligent Design: Untitled Lithographs 1970-1971, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI 2008 Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CA Applause, Miyake Fine Art, Tokyo, Japan Mabuhay Gardens, UC Berkeley Art Musuem, Berkeley, CA 2007 Bruce Conner, Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, NY Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CA Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2006 Bruce Conner Sheldon Memorial art Gallery, Lincoln, NE 2005 After Conner: Anonymous, Anonymouse and Emily Feather, Katzen Art Center Museum, American
    [Show full text]
  • Mill Valley Oral History Program a Collaboration Between the Mill Valley Historical Society and the Mill Valley Public Library
    Mill Valley Oral History Program A collaboration between the Mill Valley Historical Society and the Mill Valley Public Library David Getz An Oral History Interview Conducted by Debra Schwartz in 2020 © 2020 by the Mill Valley Public Library TITLE: Oral History of David Getz INTERVIEWER: Debra Schwartz DESCRIPTION: Transcript, 60 pages INTERVIEW DATE: January 9, 2020 In this oral history, musician and artist David Getz discusses his life and musical career. Born in New York City in 1940, David grew up in a Jewish family in Brooklyn. David recounts how an interest in Native American cultures originally brought him to the drums and tells the story of how he acquired his first drum kit at the age of 15. David explains that as an adolescent he aspired to be an artist and consequently attended Cooper Union after graduating from high school. David recounts his decision to leave New York in 1960 and drive out to California, where he immediately enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute and soon after started playing music with fellow artists. David explains how he became the drummer for Big Brother and the Holding Company in 1966 and reminisces about the legendary Monterey Pop Festival they performed at the following year. He shares numerous stories about Janis Joplin and speaks movingly about his grief upon hearing the news of her death. David discusses the various bands he played in after the dissolution of Big Brother and the Holding Company, as well as the many places he performed over the years in Marin County. He concludes his oral history with a discussion of his family: his daughters Alarza and Liz, both of whom are singer- songwriters, and his wife Joan Payne, an actress and singer.
    [Show full text]
  • Jerry Garcia Paintings & Drawings: 1961–1995
    ART EXHIBITION Jerry Garcia Paintings & Drawings: 1961–1995 June 12—September 6, 2020 This summer, the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) presents the first survey of legendary musician Jerry Garcia’s lifelong visual art practice. Garcia, born and raised in San Francisco and a lifelong Bay Area resident, was deeply influenced by the city's colorful and diverse cultures. When he was a teenager, Garcia studied visual art at SFAI (then called the California School of Fine Arts) with teachers including Wally Hedrick, a seminal American visual artist of the Bay Area Beat Generation. Garcia's painting and drawing practice continued throughout his life and provided a creative refuge in an extremely public and successful career. The exhibition includes more than 60 works, both figurative and abstract, including ink and charcoal drawings, watercolors, and digital paintings, along with a selection of Garcia’s sketchbooks. It is curated by Andrew McClintock from the collection of Deborah Koons Garcia, Garcia’s widow who received her MFA in film at SFAI. Jerry Garcia was a composer, songwriter, and guitarist who played with The Jerry Garcia Band, the Grateful Dead, and David Grisman. General Information San Francisco Art Institute – Fort Mason’s galleries are open to the public Wednesday - Sunday 11am - 7pm and are located on Pier 2 within Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Blvd., San Francisco, CA. Galleries are free to the public. For more information, the public may visit sfai.edu or call (415) 749-4563. MEDIA CONTACT Nina Sazevich Public Relations 415.752.2483 [email protected] .
    [Show full text]
  • DILEXI GALLERY Multi-Venue Retrospective
    DILEXI GALLERY Multi-Venue Retrospective Taking place at: Brian Gross Fine Art / San Francisco Crown Point Press / San Francisco Parker Gallery / Los Angeles Parrasch Heijnen Gallery / Los Angeles The Landing / Los Angeles with a related exhibition at: Marc Selwyn Fine Art / Los Angeles The Dilexi Multi-Venue Retrospective The Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco operated in the years and Southern Californian artists that had begun with his 1958-1969 and played a key role in the cultivation and friendship and tight relationship with well-known curator development of contemporary art in the Bay Area and Walter Hopps and the Ferus Gallery. beyond. The Dilexi’s young director Jim Newman had an implicit understanding of works that engaged paradigmatic Following the closure of its San Francisco venue, the Dilexi shifts, embraced new philosophical constructs, and served went on to become the Dilexi Foundation commissioning as vessels of sacred reverie for a new era. artist films, happenings, publications, and performances which sought to continue its objectives within a broader Dilexi presented artists who not only became some of the cultural sphere. most well-known in California and American art, but also notably distinguished itself by showcasing disparate artists This multi-venue exhibition, taking place in the summer of as a cohesive like-minded whole. It functioned much like 2019 at five galleries in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, a laboratory with variant chemical compounds that when rekindles the Dilexi’s original spirit of alliance. This staging combined offered a powerful philosophical formula that of multiple museum quality shows allows an exploration of actively transmuted the cultural landscape, allowing its the deeper philosophic underpinnings of the gallery’s role artists to find passage through the confining culture of the as a key vehicle in showcasing the breadth of ideas taking status quo toward a total liberation and mystical revolution.
    [Show full text]
  • California Modernism After World War Ii
    1 CALIFORNIA MODERNISM AFTER WORLD WAR II So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty. JACK KEROUAC, ON THE ROAD POSTWAR EXCHANGES Most historical accounts of cultural and artistic developments in the United States after World War II have offered little information about trends affecting artists across the country. In the rush to figure out who did what first and to locate it geographically—usu - ally in New York— the historians have ignored the fluid interchanges between the two coasts, and cultural opportunities offered on either of them in these postwar years.
    [Show full text]
  • Leo Valledor: Interview About the Artist with Professor Carlos Villa of San Francisco Art Instititute
    Leo Valledor: Interview about the artist with Professor Carlos Villa of San Francisco Art Instititute CV: Carlos Villa MB: Maria Bonn CV: I think that he is probably super important. He is super important because at the time there were maybe five or six artists, all of whom came from the Philippines, that set the foundation for Pilipino‐American art history for instance. But the first practitioner, or the first participant, in the art world who was born here was my cousin Leo Valedor. And Leo Valedor was an artist who came here to California School of Fine Arts on a scholarship directly from high school. He was about 18 at the time and he excelled so much in what he did. He stood beyond most of the people here at school that were just at his stage and he was recognized by a lot of the people who started the Six Gallery. The people who started the Six Gallery were all members of studio 15. Studio 15 was one of the studios, it’s an honors studio now, but before that it was a studio in which Joan Brown, Hayward King, all of these people and Wally Hedrick… MB: Here? CV: Yeah, here at the school. And it was a hot bed. All of these people were students at the school. They were the people beyond the great teachers and they went out and started the Six Gallery. Well, they saw Leo’s work and they said you are coming into Studio 15. So being in Studio 15 was incredibly honorific and he was the youngest kid there.
    [Show full text]
  • Oral History Interview with John Humphrey, 1974 June 25
    Oral history interview with John Humphrey, 1974 June 25 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Interview JH: JOHN HUMPHREY PK: PAUL KARLSTROM PK: Well, John, you've been associated with the San Francisco Museum of Art for a long time — probably longer than anybody else who's still around — and I believe you go back to the opening of the museum. On this tape, we'll be talking quite a bit about the growth of the museum as you've observed it. And also, of course, you've been in a good position to observe just what has happened in the Bay Area in terms of the art scene. Could you give us a little bit of your own background and just how you came to be associated with the museum? JH: Well, as a matter of fact, I'm actually a disappointed painter who decided that painting was not for him, and so, in terms of the problem of assuring enough beans on the table, I joined the staff right at the beginning of the museum. PK: What year was that? JH: That was 1935, and at the time, I actually was a packer and an unpacker of exhibitions that were being sent in from elsewhere. I helped put them on the wall and acted as one of the guards, so that I began in a very unacademic way in the arts here in the area.
    [Show full text]
  • The Prints of Bruce Conner
    Press Release Afterimage: The Prints of Bruce Conner September 20 – November 17, 2012 Senior & Shopmaker Gallery, in collaboration with the Conner Family Trust, is pleased to present Afterimage: The Prints of Bruce Conner, the first exhibition of the artist’s work at the gallery. Conner, who passed away in 2008, was born in McPherson, Kansas in 1933 and moved to San Francisco in the late 1950s where he became a pivotal figure in the Beat scene of poets, writers, artists and performers. Active in all media, including painting, collage and assemblage, sculpture, graphic arts, filmmaking, and photography, Conner brought a radical and iconoclastic approach to art-making, questioning and rejecting ideals of artistic purity, style, and identity, as well as the market-driven dynamic of the art world. The show, accompanied by an on-line catalogue with an essay by Peter Boswell, will include lithographs Conner produced in 1970-71 to preserve the imagery of his ephemeral felt-tip drawings of the period, as well as later prints based on ink blot drawings and collages. Linking the artist’s extensive graphic oeuvre to his work in other media is a command of light and shadow that permeates images hovering between fugitive and eternal, fantasy and reality. The retinal effect of his starkly monochromatic drawings of the 1960s and 1970s is achieved through the use of densely woven lines, creating highly complex shifting patterns. Formally rigorous, these maze- like drawings negate external references and dissolve figure/ground boundaries. Often structured by circular mandala forms, they attest to the artist’s deep knowledge of occult and Eastern philosophies.
    [Show full text]
  • WASHINGTON — Whatever Happened to “Protest Art” — Issue
    WASHINGTON — Whatever happened to “protest art” — issue-specific, say-no-to-power-and-say-it-loud art? Here we are, embroiled, as a nation, in what many in the art world regard as a pretty desperate political situation. Yet with the exception for actions by a few collectives — Decolonize This Place at the Whitney Museum, and Prescription Addiction Intervention Now, or PAIN, at the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — there’s scant visual evidence of pushback. Has the product glut demanded by endless art fairs distracted from the protest impulse? Has the flood of news about turmoil in Washington put out the fires of resistance among artists? Has protest art simply become unfashionable? Such questions came to mind on a visit to “Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965-1975,” a big, inspiriting survey at the Smithsonian American Art Museum here. Everything in it dates from a time in the past when the nation was in danger of losing its soul, and American artists — some, anyway — were trying to save theirs by denouncing what they viewed as a racist war. Of the ’60s shows I’ve seen in the past few years, this one is the best, evocative of its time, and in sync with the present. And, importantly, it comes with a second, smaller show that’s far more than a mere add-on. Titled “Tiffany Chung: Vietnam, Past Is Prologue,” it’s a view of the Vietnam War era through Vietnamese eyes, the eyes of people on the receiving end of aggression. In the 1960s — before identity politics, before postcolonial studies — few museums would have thought to do such a show, but it absolutely needed doing.
    [Show full text]
  • A Finding Aid to the Jay Defeo Papers, Circa 1940S-1970S, in the Archives of American Art
    A Finding Aid to the Jay DeFeo Papers, circa 1940s-1970s, in the Archives of American Art Helen MacDiarmid 2014 October 9 Archives of American Art 750 9th Street, NW Victor Building, Suite 2200 Washington, D.C. 20001 https://www.aaa.si.edu/services/questions https://www.aaa.si.edu/ Table of Contents Collection Overview ........................................................................................................ 1 Administrative Information .............................................................................................. 1 Arrangement..................................................................................................................... 2 Scope and Contents........................................................................................................ 2 Biographical / Historical.................................................................................................... 2 Names and Subjects ...................................................................................................... 3 Container Listing ............................................................................................................. 4 Series 1: Biographical Material, 1948-1969............................................................. 4 Series 2: Correspondence, 1960-1970s.................................................................. 5 Series 3: Writings, circa 1960s................................................................................ 7 Series 4: Personal Business Records, 1964-1974..................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Whitney to Present Jay Defeo: a Retrospective
    THE WHITNEY TO PRESENT JAY DEFEO: A RETROSPECTIVE DeFeo working on what was then titled Deathrose, 1960. Photograph by Burt Glinn. © Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos NEW YORK, December 12, 2012—Jay DeFeo spent nearly eight years realizing her masterpiece, The Rose (1958-66), an approximately 2,000-pound painting that is now recognized as one of the icons of the Whitney Museum’s collection. This winter, the Whitney will place The Rose within the context of more than four decades of DeFeo’s work in the most comprehensive look at the artist to date. Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective, which opens on February 28, 2013, features nearly 150 of DeFeo’s works, many of which will be exhibited for the first time. The show traces motifs and themes the artist examined throughout her career in drawings, photographs, collages, jewelry, and the monumental paintings for which she is best known. The exhibition is organized by Dana Miller, curator of the permanent collection at the Whitney, and will be on view in the fourth-floor Emily Fisher Landau Galleries through June 2, 2013. “DeFeo remains an artist whose full career has not yet received the careful consideration that it deserves,” Miller states. “In presenting her entire career, this retrospective demonstrates the captivating sweep of DeFeo’s heterogeneous work and illuminates her groundbreaking experimentation and extraordinary vision.” The retrospective comes home to the Whitney after receiving critical acclaim and attracting large audiences at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker wrote in his review of the exhibition, “Before and since her death at 60 in 1989, DeFeo's reputation has hinged on one colossal work: ‘The Rose’…This belated career survey corrects that overemphasis but, more important, it introduces DeFeo to a broad public as an artist of wide and diverse accomplishment.” The substantially larger presentation at the Whitney will also feature an expanded selection of DeFeo’s drawings and photographs from the 1970s.
    [Show full text]