“Jay DeFeo, Applaud the Black Fact ” Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA. Through Oct.27.
“Only by chancing the ridiculous, can I hope for the sublime.” said Jay DeFeo in a 1959 Museum of Modern Art catalogue statement. “Only by discovering that which is true within myself, can I hope to be understood by others.” The Neilson Gallery in Boston has installed a show of work DeFeo completed after she finished “The Rose,” a paiinting that took eight years to paint. Cate McQuaid reports in the Boston Globe: “Jay DeFeo, a San Francisco artist of the Beat Generation, is known for one monumental painting, ‘The Rose,’ which she painted and repainted from 1958 to 1966. Close to 11 feet tall by 8 feet wide, the painting, now owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, carries more than a ton of white and gray pigment, built into a pattern of radiating lines that look carved out of a rock face. Born from Abstract Expressionism, it was finished as Pop Art was on the rise, a little late for its time. DeFeo didn’t work at all for a couple of years after she finished that project, and when she did return to the studio, she made photos, paintings, collages, and assemblages that were much more modest in scale. ” Read more. Defeo died in 1989, but her estate maintains a website which includes updated information about current exhibitions.
